THE  SALTON   SEA 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •   BOSTON   •   CHICAGO    •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA    •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON    •   BOMBAY    •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO. 


THE   SALTON    SEA 


AN  ACCOUNT  OF  HARRIMAN'S  FIGHT 
WITH  THE  COLORADO  RIVER 


BY 

GEORGE    KENNAN 
ft 


ILLUSTRATED 


flork 
THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1917 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1917 

BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
Set  up  and  printed.     Published  May,  1917. 


FOREWORD 

I  desire  gratefully  to  acknowledge  my  in- 
debtedness to  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  the 
U.  S.  Reclamation  Service,  the  U.  S.  Geological 
Survey,  the  American  Society  of  Civil  Engi- 
neers, and  the  officials  of  the  Southern  Pacific 
Railroad  Company,  for  their  courtesy  in  fur- 
nishing me  information,  or  permitting  me  to 
make  use  of  their  maps,  diagrams  and  illus- 
trations. 

GEORGE  KENNAN. 


3G5569 


CONTENTS 

PAGES 

1.  THE  SALTON  SINK 5 

2.  THE  CREATION  OF  THE  OASIS 18 

3.  THE  RUNAWAY  RIVER 31 

4.  THE  SAVING  OF  THE  VALLEY 61 

5.  THE  RECOMPENSE 93 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  Sal  ton  Sea  in  August,  1906.  . .  .Frontispiece 

Opposite  page 

Relief  Map  of  Imperial  Valley 19 

A  Part  of  Colorado  River  Watershed 31 

Agricultural  Lands  Eroded 57 

A  Flood  Waterfall. 

58 
Nearer  View  of  Flood  Cataract ) 

Channel  Cut  by  Runaway  River 60 

Hind-Clarke  Dam . 

89 
Railroad  Track  on  Reconstructed  Levee .  . 


THE  SALTON   SEA 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

"The  desert  waited,  silent, 
hot  and  fierce  in  its  desolation, 
holding  its  treasures  under  the 
seal  of  death  against  the  com- 
ing of  the  strong  ones."  (In- 
scription over  the  main  entrance 
to  the  Barbara  Worth  Hotel, 
El  Centra,  Imperial  Valley.) 

No  series  of  events  in  the  history  of  southern 
California  is  more  interesting,  or  more  dramatic, 
than  the  creation  of  the  beautiful  and  fertile 
oasis  of  the  Imperial  Valley  in  the  arid  desert- 
basin  of  the  Salton  Sink;  the  partial  transforma- 
tion of  this  cultivated  valley  into  a  great  In- 
land Sea  by  the  furious  inpour  of  a  runaway 
river;  the  barring  out  of  the  flood  by  the  cour- 
age and  energy  of  a  single  man,  and  the  final 
development  of  the  valley  into  one  of  the  richest 
agricultural  areas  in  the  world. 
2  Sixteen  years  ago,  the  region  whose  produc- 
tiveness now  rivals  that  of  the  lower  Nile  was 
the  dried-up  bottom  of  an  ancient  sea.  It  was 
seldom  sprinkled  by  rain;  it  was  scorched  by 
sunshine  of  almost  equatorial  intensity,  and 
during  the  summer  months  its  mirage-haunted 


• '  r '.  •  •  -   • '  •     -    -    - ' 

'•'"''"'     "v          ''''"I  "       v."   * 

^THE  SALTON  SEA 

air  was  frequently  heated  to  a  temperature  of 
120  degrees.  The  greater  part  of  it  lay  far  be- 
low the  level  of  the  sea;  nearly  all  of  it  was 
destitute  of  water  and  vegetation;  furious  dust 
and  sand  storms  swept  across  it,  and  it  was 
regarded,  by  all  the  early  explorers. of  the  South- 
west, as  perhaps  the  dreariest  and  most  for- 
bidding desert  on  the  North  American  conti- 
nent. This  ancient  sea-basin,  which  thousands 
of  years  ago  held  the  northern  part  of  the  Gulf 
of  California,  is  now  the  Imperial  Valley — a 
vast  agricultural  and  horticultural  hothouse, 
which  produces  almost  everything  that  can  be 
grown  in  lower  Egypt,  and  which  has  recently 
been  described  in  the  San  Francisco  Argonaut 
as  "potentially  the  richest  unified  district  in 
the  United  States." 

As  recently  as  the  year  1900,  the  Imperial 
Valley  had  not  a  single  civilized  inhabitant, 
and  not  one  of  its  hot,  arid  acres  had  ever  been 
cultivated.  It  now  has  a  population  of  more 
than  forty  thousand,  with  churches,  banks,  ice 
factories,  electric-light  plants  and  fine  school 
buildings,  in  half  a  dozen  prosperous  towns,  and 
its  400,000  acres  of  cultivated  land  have  pro- 
duced, in  the  last  six  or  eight  years,  crops  to  the 
value  of  at  least  $50,000,000.  The  history  of 
this  fertile  oasis  in  the  Colorado  Desert  will 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

forever  be  connected  with  the  name  of  E.  H. 
Harriman.  He  did  not  create  the  Imperial 
Valley,  nor  did  he  develop  it;  but  he  saved  it 
from  ruinous  devastation  at  a  time  when  the 
agency  that  had  created  it  threatened  ca- 
priciously to  destroy  it,  and  when  there  was 
no  other  power  in  the  world  that  could  give  it 
protection. 

THE   SALTON  SINK 

The  story  of  the  Imperial  Valley  begins  with 
the  formation,  in  remote  geologic  times,  of  the 
great  shallow  depression,  or  basin,  which  mod- 
ern explorers  have  called  the  Salton  Sink. 
Tens  of  thousands  of  years  ago,  before  the 
appearance  of  man  on  earth,  the  long  arm  of 
the  Pacific  Ocean  which  is  now  known  as  the 
Gulf  of  California  extended  in  a  northwesterly 
direction  to  a  point  more  than  a  hundred  miles 
distant  from  its  present  head.  Its  terminus 
was  then  near  the  San  Gorgonio  pass,  about 
ninety  miles  east  of  the  place  where  Los  Angeles 
now  stands,  and  it  extended  across  the  Colorado 
Desert  to  the  site  of  the  present  town  of  Yuma. 
If  it  had  not  been  affected  by  external  forces, 
it  would  probably  have  retained  to  the  present 
day  its  ancient  boundary  line;  but  into  it,  on 

5 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

its  eastern  side,  happened  to  empty  one  of  the 
mightiest  rivers  of  the  Great  West — the  Colo- 
rado— and  by  this  agency  the  upper  part  of  the 
Gulf  was  gradually  separated  from  the  lower, 
and  was  finally  turned  into  a  salt-water  lake, 
equal  in  extent  to  the  Great  Salt  Lake  in  Utah. 
This  detached  body  of  ocean  water,  which  had 
formerly  been  the  upper  part  of  the  Gulf  of 
California,  completely  filled  the  basin  of  the 
Salton  Sink,  and  had  an  area  of  approximately 
2100  square  miles. 

"But  how,"  it  may  be  asked,  "could  a  river, 
however  mighty,  cut  the  Gulf  of  California  in 
two,  so  as  to  separate  the  upper  part  from  the 
lower  and  leave  the  former  isolated?"  Easily 
enough  in  the  long  ages  of  geologic  time.  A 
great  river  like  the  Colorado  does  not  consist  of 
water  only.  It  holds  in  suspension  and  carries 
down  to  the  sea  a  great  load  of  sediment,  which, 
when  deposited  at  its  mouth,  gradually  builds 
up  a  delta-plain  of  mud,  and  often  changes 
topographical  conditions  over  a  wide  area. 
It  was  this  deposited  sediment  that  cut  the 
Gulf  of  California  in  two.  The  drainage  basin 
of  the  Colorado  and  its  tributaries  extends  from 
the  Gulf  of  California  to  the  southern  edge  of 
the  Yellowstone  National  Park,  and  has  an 
area  of  more  than  260,000  square  miles.  Most 

6 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

of  this  area  is  mountainous,  and  the  innumerable 
streams  that  tear  down  through  its  gorges  and 
ravines  erode  and  gather  up  vast  quantities 
of  sediment,  which  the  river  carries  to  the  Gulf 
and  finally  deposits  in  its  waters.  How  great 
a  load  of  silt  the  Colorado  brought  down  in 
prehistoric  times  we  have  no  means  of  know- 
ing; but  it  transports  past  Yuma  now  about 
160,000,000  tons  of  solid  matter  every  year,  or 
enough  to  fill  a  reservoir  one  mile  square  to  a 
depth  of  one  hundred  and  twenty  five  feet.1 
Century  after  century,  the  river  poured  this 
vast  quantity  of  silt  into  the  Gulf  opposite  its 
mouth,  and  gradually  built  up  a  delta-bar  which 
extended  westward,  year  by  year,  until  it 
finally  reached  the  opposite  coast.  The  upper 
part  of  the  Gulf  was  then  separated  from  the 
lower  by  a  natural  levee,  in  the  shape  of  a 
delta-plain,  which  was  perhaps  ten  miles  in 
width  by  thirty  in  length,  and  which  extended 
from  a  point  near  the  present  site  of  Yuma  to 
the  rampart  of  the  Cocopah  Mountains  at 
Black  Butte.  When  the  river  had  thus  cut  the 
Gulf  of  California  in  two,  it  happened  to  choose 
a  course  for  itself  on  the  southeastern  side  of  the 
delta-plain  that  it  had  built  up,  and  thereafter 
it  discharged  its  waters  into  the  lower  Gulf, 
1  Rep.  of  U.  S.  Geolog.  Survey  for  1916. 
7 


The  Ancient  Gulf  of  California 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

leaving  what  had  been  the  upper  Gulf  isolated 
as  a  salt-water  lake.  Under  the  burning  sun 
of  that  region  about  six  feet  of  water  evaporates 
every  year,  and  in  course  of  time  the  lake  dried 
up,  leaving  the  arid  basin  afterward  known  as 
the  Salton  Sink.  This  depression  was  about  one 
hundred  miles  in  length  by  thirty  five  hi  width. 
It  then  had  a  maximum  depth  of  perhaps  one 
thousand  feet,  and  in  the  deeper  parts  its  floor 
was  covered  with  an  incrustation  of  salt. 

How  long  this  ancient  sea-bottom  remained 
dry  cannot  now  be  determined;  but  many 
thousands  of  years  ago,  probably  in  Middle 
Tertiary  times  the  Colorado  River,  which  had 
first  cut  off  the  basin  from  the  ocean  and  thus 
allowed  it  to  become  waterless,  proceeded  to 
refill  it.  Running  over  a  raised  delta-plain  of 
silt,  which  sloped  both  ways,  the  river  could 
easily  be  diverted  to  either  side,  and  in  one  of 
its  prehistoric  floods  it  capriciously  changed  its 
course,  leaving  the  Gulf  and  pouring  its  waters 
into  the  dry  basin  of  the  Salton  Sink.  When  it 
had  refilled  this  basin,  and  transformed  it  into 
a  great  fresh-water  lake,  it  broke  through  the 
silt  dam,  or  levee,  on  the  Cocopah  Mountain 
side,  and  found  a  new  outlet  to  the  Gulf  through 
what  is  now  known  as  Hardy's  Colorado.  For 
many  years — possibly  for  centuries — the  Salton 

9 

r 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

Sink  was  a  fresh-water  lake,  into  which  the 
Colorado  poured  150,000,000  tons  or  more  of 
silt  every  year.  At  last,  suddenly  or  grad- 
ually, the  river  again  changed  its  course,  aban- 
doning the  Sink  and  cutting  a  channel  to  the 
Gulf  through  the  eastern  part  of  the  delta?, 
plain.  Then  the  Salton  Sea  again  dried  up, 
leaving  a  two-hundred-mile  ellipse  of  fresh- 
water shells  to  mark  its  former  level. 

How  many  times,  since  the  Tertiary  epoch, 
the  Salton  Sink  has  been  alternately  emptied 
and  refilled,  we  have  no  means  of  knowing;  but 
the  instability  of  the  conditions  that  now  de- 
termine the  course  of  the  Colorado  below 
Yuma  seem  to  indicate  that,  at  intervals  of 
four  or  five  hundred  years  for  many  millen- 
niums, the  river,  like  a  great  liquid  pendulum, 
swung  back  and  forth  across  its  delta,  now 
emptying  into  the  Gulf  on  the  Arizona  side, 
and  then  discharging  into  the  Sink  on  the 
California  side.  Every  time  the  lake  was 
deprived  of  the  river  water  it  dried  up,  and 
every  time  the  Sink  was  revisited  by  the  river 
it  again  became  a  lake.  That  the  Colorado 
must  have  returned  to  this  basin  many  times, 
and  flowed  into  it  for  long  periods,  is  indicated 
by  the  fact  that  after  the  Sink  was  separated 
from  the  Gulf  of  California,  the  river  carried 

10 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

into  it  something  like  seventeen  cubic  miles  of 
silt.1  Artesian  well  borings  at  Holtville  show 
that  the  sedimentary  deposits  in  that  part  of 
the  Imperial  Valley  are  now  more  than  1000 
feet  in  depth. 

For  three  centuries  or  more — from  1540  to 
1902 — the  Salton  Sink  was  a  hot,  arid  desert. 
Melchior  Diaz,  a  Spanish  explorer  in  the  service 
of  Cortes,  reached  the  edge  of  it  in  the  fall  of 
1540,  and  the  Spanish  captain  Juan  Butista  de 
Anza  crossed  it  two  hundred  and  thirty  four 
years  later;  but  neither  of  them  saw  anything 
like  a  lake.  The  only  evidence  that  the  Col- 
orado River  ran  into  the  Sink,  at  any  tune  be- 
tween 1540  and  1905,  is  furnished  by  the  so- 
called  Rocque  map,  now  in  the  British  Museum, 
which  was  compiled  from  all  the  sources  of  in- 
formation that  were  in  existence  in  1762.  This 
map  shows  a  considerable  body  of  water  in 
the  Salton  Sink,  with  the  Colorado  River  flow- 
ing into  it;  but  no  written  record  in  support 
of  the  map  has  ever  been  found,  and  the  prob- 
ability is  that  the  water  was  nothing  more 
than  a  comparatively  small  lake,  or  lagoon,  fed 

1  "The  Imperial  Valley  and  Salton  Sink,"  by  H.  T.  Cory, 
formerly  Chief  Engineer  of  the  California  Development  Co., 
p.  49;  San  Francisco  1915  (embodying  paper  read  Jan.  8, 
1913,  before  the  Amer.  Soc.  of  Civil  Engineers  and  published 
in  its  Transactions  as  "Paper  1270"). 

ii 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

by  the  Colorado  in  time  of  flood.  Overflow 
water  in  considerable  quantities  often  reached 
the  basin  when  the  river  happened  to  be  more 
than  bank  full;  but  the  main  current  of  the 
Colorado  continued  to  flow  into  the  Gulf,  and 
the  flood  water  in  the  Sink  soon  evaporated. 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  i8th  century  and  the 
first  half  of  the  igth,  many  Spanish  and  Amer- 
ican pathfinders  crossed  the  Sink  on  their  way 
from  Yuma  to  the  California  missions,  but  none 
of  them  found  anything  like  a  lake.  Colonel 
W.  H.  Emory,  who  traversed  it  with  General 
Kearney  in  the  fall  of  1846,  described  it  as  a 
hot,  arid  desert,  where  there  was  a  stretch  of 
"ninety  miles  from  water  to  water,"  and  where 
no  vegetation  could  be  found  except  scattered 
desert  shrubs  and  two  small  patches  of  sun- 
burned grass.  Captain  A.  R.  Johnson,  who 
also  accompanied  the  Kearney  expedition,  was 
the  first  to  notice  the  fact  that  this  stretch  of 
waterless  desert  was  the  dried-up  bottom  of 
an  ancient  lake;  but  neither  he  nor  Colonel 
Emory  observed  the  still  more  suggestive  fact 
that  it  was  below  the  level  of  the  sea.  In  the 
deepest  part  of  the  basin,  near  the  present  sta- 
tion of  Sal  ton,  they  discovered  a  small  lagoon; 
but  its  water  proved  to  be  so  saturated  with 
alkali  and  salt  that  it  was  "  wholly  unfit  for 

12 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

man  or  brute."  Three  years  later,  gold-seekers 
from  the  East  began  to  take  this  route  to  the 
Pacific  Coast,  and  Bayard  Taylor,  in  his  "El- 
dorado," has  given  their  impressions  of  the 
Salton  Sink  in  the  following  words : 

"The  emigrants  by  the  Gila  route  gave  a 
terrible  account  of  the  crossing  of  the  Great 
Desert  lying  west  of  the  Colorado.  They  de- 
scribed this  region  as  scorching  and  sterile — a 
country  of  burning  salt  plains  and  shifting  hills 
of  sand,  where  the  only  signs  of  human  habita- 
tion were  the  bones  of  animals  and  men  scat- 
tered along  the  trails." 

Such,  seventy  years  ago,  was  the  Salton 
Sink,  and  such  it  had  been  during  the  three 
preceding  centuries  of  recorded  history.  If 
anyone  had  then  ventured  to  predict  that  this 
dried-up  bed  of  the  Gulf  of  California,  this  hot, 
sterile  and  apparently  irreclaimable  desert, 
would  eventually  become  a  beautiful  cultivated 
valley,  producing  cotton,  barley,  alfalfa,  dates, 
melons  and  fruit,  to  the  value  of  ten  or  fifteen 
million  dollars  every  year,  he  would  have  been 
generally  regarded  as  a  visionary  enthusiast,  if 
not  a  desert-crazed  monomaniac. 

Although,  at  the  beginning  of  the  "gold 
rush"  to  California  in  1849,  the  Salton  Sink  had 
been  known  to  the  Spaniards  for  more  than 

13 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

three  centuries,  and  to  American  explorers  for 
at  least  twenty  years,  no  scientific  examination 
of  it  had  ever  been  made.  Four  years  later,  how- 
ever, in  1853,  Jefferson  Davis,  who  was  then 
Secretary  of  War,  prevailed  upon  Congress  to 
authorize  a  series  of  explorations  for  the  dis- 
covery of  a  practicable  railroad  route  to  the 
Pacific  Coast.  Lieutenant  R.  S.  Williamson, 
of  the  United  States  Topographic  Engineers, 
was  selected  as  leader  of  the  southern  expedi- 
tion, and  with  him,  as  geologist,  went  Professor 
William  P.  Blake  of  New  York,  a  young  grad- 
uate of  the  Yale  Scientific  School,  who  after- 
ward attained  great  distinction  as  geologist, 
explorer  and  mining  engineer,  in  fields  as  widely 
separated  as  Arizona,  Alaska  and  Japan.  Pro- 
fessor Blake  was  the  first  to  explain  the  origin 
of  the  Salton  Sink,  to  trace  its  ancient  history, 
and  to  give  a  name  to  the  great  fresh-water 
lake  that  it  had  once  held.  He  was  also  the 
first  to  suggest  the  possibility  of  irrigating  it, 
and  to  predict  that  when  it  should  be  supplied 
with  water  it  would  "yield  crops  of  almost 
any  kind."  Reclamation  of  desert  areas  is 
now  comparatively  common;  but  sixty  years 
ago,  only  a  bold  and  original  mind  could  have 
entertained  the  idea  of  getting  crops  out  of  such 
a  "Death  Valley"  as  the  Salton  Sink  then  was. 

14 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

Professor  Blake,  however,  had  the  imagination 
of  an  investigator,  tempered  by  the  accurate 
knowledge  of  a  scientist,  and  he  could  see  that 
the  sedimentary  deposits  in  that  ancient  sea- 
basin  needed  only  water  to  make  them  fertile. 

The  Kearney  expedition  of  1846,  and  the 
Bartlett  and  Williamson  surveys  in  1850  and 
1853,  demonstrated  the  practicability  of  reach- 
ing California  by  the  southern  route,  and 
thousands  of  emigrants,  attracted  to  the 
Pacific  Coast  by  the  discovery  of  gold,  went 
that  way  in  order  to  avoid  the  high  mountains 
and  the  snow  that  they  would  have  encountered 
further  north.  This  rising  tide  of  travel  soon 
led  to  improvement  in  the  means  of  transporta- 
tion. Early  in  the  "gold  rush,"  Dr.  A.  L. 
Lincoln,  a  relative  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  estab- 
lished a  permanent  ferry  across  the  Colorado, 
near  the  junction  of  that  river  with  the  Gila; 
a  few  years  later,  seventy  four  camels  and 
dromedaries  were  imported  from  Africa  for  use 
on  the  desert  part  of  the  route;  and  in  1857,  a 
private  company  began  running  bimonthly 
stages  between  San  Antonio,  Texas,  and  San 
Diego,  California.  Finally,  in  1858,  the  Gov- 
ernment established  the  "Butterneld  Overland 
Mail,"  which  ran  a  semi- weekly  line  of  coaches 
from  St.  Louis  to  San  Francisco,  by  way  of  El 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

Paso,  Yuma  and  the  Colorado  Desert,  on  a 
time  schedule  of  twenty  five  days.  This  line 
was  well  equipped  with  more  than  a  hundred 
specially  constructed  Concord  coaches,  a  thou- 
sand horses,  seven  hundred  mules,  and  about 
one  hundred  and  fifty  drivers.  It  received 
from  the  Government  a  subsidy  of  $600,000  a 
year,  and  was  the  longest  continuous  horse- 
express  line  then  in  existence  on  the  North 
American  continent.  Until  the  outbreak  of 
the  Civil  War,  this  southern  route  was  the  main 
artery  of  travel  from  the  eastern  States  to  the 
Pacific  Coast;  and  it  is  estimated  that,  between 
1849  and  1860,  eight  thousand  emigrants 
crossed  the  Colorado  Desert  on  their  way  to 
California. 

Of  all  these  eight  thousand  gold-seekers  or 
pioneers,  only  one  seems  to  have  been  impressed 
by  the  agricultural  possibilities  of  the  Salton 
Sink.  Dr.  O.  M.  Wozencraft,  who  has  been 
described  as  "a  man  of  marked  personality 
and  far-reaching  vision  who  lived  a  generation 
before  his  time,"  crossed  the  Sink  on  his  way  to 
San  Bernardino  sometime  in  the  early  fifties; 
noticed  the  deposit  of  silt  in  the  bed  of  the 
ancient  lake;  observed  that  the  shallow  basin 
lay  so  far  below  the  level  of  the  Colorado  River 
that  it  might  easily  be  irrigated  therefrom;  and 

16 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

reached  the  conclusion,  previously  stated  by 
Professor  Blake,  that  the  arid  waste  of  the  Sink, 
if  adequately  supplied  with  water,  could  be 
made  to  "yield  crops  of  almost  any  kind." 
This  idea  so  took  possession  of  his  mind  that, 
during  the  next  five  or  six  years,  he  spent  much 
of  his  time  and  a  large  part  of  his  private  means 
in  promoting  schemes  for  the  irrigation  of  this 
desert  area.  His  engineer,  Ebenezer  Hadley 
of  San  Diego,  made  a  preliminary  survey  of  the 
Sink,  and  recommended  a  canal  location  prac- 
tically identical  with  that  which  forty  years 
later  was  adopted.  In  1859,  upon  the  ini- 
tiative of  Dr.  Wozencraft,  the  California  legis- 
lature asked  Congress  to  cede  to  the  State 
3,000,000  acres  of  arid  land,  including  the 
Salt  on  Sink,  for  irrigation  purposes.  The  bill 
was  favorably  reported  by  a  House  committee, 
but  failed  to  pass.  The  Congressmen  of  that 
time  regarded  the  reclamation  of  the  Colorado 
Desert  as  a  subject  for  jocular  rather  than 
serious  treatment,  and  most  of  them  were 
in  sympathy  with  the  California  humorist,  J. 
Ross  Browne,  who  said:  "I  can  see  no  great 
obstacle  to  success  except  the  porous  nature 
of  the  sand.  By  removing  the  sand  from  the 
desert,  success  would  be  insured  at  once." 
With  the  failure  of  Dr.  Wozencraft's  attempt 

17 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

to  bring  about  the  reclamation  of  the  Colorado 
Desert,  interest  in  that  region  gradually  waned. 
The  Butterfield  Overland  Mail  service  to  the 
Pacific  Coast  was  discontinued;  a  new  "Pony 
Express"  line  to  San  Francisco,  by  way  of  Salt 
Lake  City,  was  established;  and  before  1865, 
the  southern  route,  via  Yuma  and  the  Colorado 
Desert,  had  been  practically  abandoned.  Dr. 
Wozencraft  continued  talking,  to  all  who  would 
listen,  about  his  scheme  for  the  irrigation  of  the 
Sal  ton  Sink;  but  most  people  regarded  it  as 
visionary,  and  nobody  seemed  inclined  to  take 
it  up.  Only  in  1891,  thirty  eight  years  after 
Professor  Blake  first  suggested  irrigation,  and 
twenty  nine  years  after  Dr.  Wozencraft's  bill 
failed  in  Congress,  was  a  serious  attempt  made 
to  realize  the  "dream"  of  turning  water  into 
the  Salton  Sink  and  creating  a  fertile  oasis  in 
the  heart  of  the  Colorado  Desert. 

THE   CREATION  OF  THE  OASIS 

In  1891,  John  C.  Beatty,  of  California,  an- 
other man  who  had  imagination  and  foresight, 
became  interested  in  the  agricultural  possi- 
bilities of  the  Colorado  Desert,  and  formed  a 
corporation  under  the  name  of  "The  California 
Irrigation  Company"  for  the  purpose  of  carry- 

18 


COLORADO  RIVER. 
MOWING   IRRIGABLE  LANDS 

s  a  MEXICO. 


Relief  Map  of  Imperial  Valley  and  Its  Environment 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

ing  water  into  the  Salton  Sink  from  the  Colo- 
rado River.  He  engaged  as  his  technical  ad- 
viser Mr.  C.  R.  Rockwood,  who  had  been  in  the 
employ  of  the  U.  S.  Reclamation  Service,  and 
who  was  regarded  as  "a  shrewd  and  clever  man 
and  engineer."  1  Mr.  Rockwood  made  a  careful 
survey  of  the  Colorado  delta,  and  found,  as 
Lieutenant  Bergland  had  found  in  an  earlier 
survey,  that  between  the  river  and  the  Sink 
there  was  a  natural  obstacle  in  the  shape  of  a 
range  of  sand  hills,  which  extended  southward 
to  the  border  line  of  Mexico.  All  natural  over- 
flows of  the  river,  in  prehistoric  tunes,  had 
been  south  of  this  barrier,  and  Mr.  Rockwood 
thought  that  it  would  be  easier  and  more 
economical  to  follow  the  river's  ancient  track 
-than  to  put  a  conduit  through  these  hills  on 
the  American  side  of  the  boundary.  He  pro- 
posed, therefore,  to  take  water  from  the  Colo- 
rado at  Potholes,  twelve  miles  above  Yuma, 
carry  it  southward  into  Mexico,  thence  west- 
ward around  the  promontory  of  sand  hills,  and 
finally  northward,  across  the  line  again,  into 
southern  California.  This  plan  would  involve 
the  digging  of  a  curving  canal,  forty  or  fifty 
miles  in  length,  through  Mexican  territory;  but 
it  would  obviate  the  necessity  of  cutting  through 

1  Mr.  H.  T.  Cory. 
19 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

the  sand  hills,  and  would  perhaps  enable  the 
diggers  to  utilize,  on  the  Mexican  side,  one  of 
the  dry  barrancas,  or  ancient  overflow  channels, 
through  which  the  Colorado  discharged  into  the 
Sink  in  ages  past. 

Owing  to  the  lack  of  public  confidence  in 
reclamation  experiments,  Mr.  Beatty  and  his 
associates  were  not  able  to  secure  as  much 
capital  as  they  needed  for  their  enterprise,  and 
when  the  monetary  panic  of  1893  came,  they 
found  themselves  involved  in  financial  diffi- 
culties from  which  they  could  not  extricate 
themselves.  In  the  latter  part  of  1893  the 
California  Irrigation  Co.  went  into  bankruptcy, 
and  its  maps,  records,  and  engineering  data 
were  turned  over  to  Mr.  Rockwood,  in  satis- 
faction of  a  judgment  that  he  obtained  in  a 
suit  for  his  unpaid  salary.1 

This  seemed  likely  to  put  an  end  to  the  Salton 
Sink  project;  but  Mr.  Rockwood,  whose  obser- 
vations and  work  in  the  Colorado  delta  had 
given  him  unbounded  faith  in  the  ultimate 
success  of  the  scheme,  determined  to  undertake 
the  promotion  of  it  himself.  After  several 
years  of  endeavor,  he  succeeded  in  forming 
another  organization  which  was  incorporated 
in  New  Jersey,  on  the  2&st  of  April  1896,  under 

1  Mr.  Cory. 

20 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

the  title  of  "The  California  Development 
Company."  For  two  years  or  more,  this 
corporation  tried  to  get  permission  from  the 
Mexican  Government  to  hold  land,  acquire 
rights,  and  dig  an  irrigating  canal  south  of  the 
boundary  line;  but  the  Mexican  authorities 
refused  to  make  any  concessions,  and  it  was 
finally  found  necessary  to  organize  a  subsidiary 
Mexican  company.  This  corporation,  which  had 
a  nominal  capital  of  $62,000,  was  wholly  owned 
and  controlled  by  the  California  Development 
Co.,  but  it  operated  under  a  Mexican  charter. 

As  the  financial  resources  of  both  companies 
were  largely  on  paper,  it  then  became  necessary 
to  secure  real  capital  for  the  prosecution  of  the 
work,  and  this  task  Mr.  Rockwood  found  ex- 
tremely difficult.  The  proposed  reclamation 
of  an  arid  desert,  where  the  thermometer  went 
in  summer  to  120  in  the  shade,  and  where  only 
two  or  three  inches  of  rain  fell  in  the  course  of 
the  whole  year,  did  not  strike  Eastern  capitalists 
as  a  very  promising  venture,  and  most  of  them 
were  disinclined  to  go  into  it.  At  last,  how- 
ever, in  1898,  Mr.  Rockwood  secured  a  promise 
from  certain  capitalists  in  New  York  that  they 
would  advance  the  necessary  funds;  but  two 
days  before  the  papers  were  to  be  signed,  the 
American  battleship  " Maine"  was  blown  up  in 

21 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

the  harbor  of  Havana,  and  this  catastrophe, 
together  with  the  war  that  followed  it,  put  an 
end  to  the  negotiations. 

But  the  plan  for  the  irrigation  of  the  Salton 
Sink  was  not  destined  to  fail.  Among  the  men 
with  whom  Dr.  Wozencraft  discussed  it,  in  the 
early  eighties,  was  George  Chaffey,  a  civil  engi- 
neer and  irrigation  expert  of  Los  Angeles,  who 
had  had  a  good  deal  of  experience  in  dealing 
with  water  problems,  and  who  had  already 
established  successful  irrigation  systems  in  other 
parts  of  California.1  Mr.  Chaffey  declined  to 
go  into  it  at  Dr.  Wozencraft's  solicitation,  not 
because  he  was  afraid  of  the  engineering  diffi- 
culties involved,  but  because  he  thought  that 

iln  his  "Imperial  Valley  and  Salton  Sink,"  Mr.  H.  T. 
Cory,  formerly  chief  engineer  of  the  California  Development 
Co.,  refers  to  Mr.  Chaffey  in  the  following  words: 

"The  writer  takes  pleasure  in  expressing  appreciation  of 
the  standing  of  Mr.  George  M.  Chaffey  hi  irrigation  work 
in  the  West.  The  Ontario  Colony  he  founded  in  1883  was 
selected  ten  years  later  as  a  model  for  the  irrigation  exhibit 
at  the  World's  Exposition,  and  in  his  work  at  Mildura, 
Australia,  he  designed,  had  built  in  England,  and  installed, 
the  first  centrifugal  pumps  on  the  same  shaft  with  a  total 
capacity  of  320  cubic  feet  per  second  lifted  20  feet.  He  is  at 
present,  among  other  things,  liead  of  the  magnificent  water 
system  irrigating  10,000  acres  of  citrus  lands  near  Whittier, 
California,  including  the  highest  priced  agricultural  lands 
in  California  ($5,000  per  acre).  Furthermore  he  is  a  man  of 
affairs,  and  of  large  means  which  he  acquired  principally 
in  irrigation  enterprises  and  banking." 

22 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

the  torrid  climate  of  the  Sink  would  prevent 
colonization  of  it,  even  if  the  colonists  were 
promised  plenty  of  water.  Most  men,  he 
reasoned,  would  be  frightened  by  the  prospect 
of  having  to  do  hard  agricultural  labor  in  shade 
temperatures  of  no  to  120,  and  sun  tempera- 
tures of  perhaps  140  to  150.  They  simply 
would  not  go  to  a  place  where  they  would  be 
subjected  to  such  heat.  Some  years  later,  how- 
ever, Mr.  Chaffey  carried  through  successfully 
an  irrigation  enterprise  in  the  interior  of  Aus- 
tralia, where  the  temperature  in  the  shade  often 
reached  a  maximum  of  125,  but  where,  never- 
theless, men  were  able  to  work  without  danger 
or  serious  inconvenience.  This  changed  his 
view  of  irrigation  in  the  Colorado  Desert;  and 
in  1900,  when  the  California  Development  Co. 
seemed  unable  to  get  money  enough  for  its 
project  elsewhere,  Mr.  Chaffey  offered  to  finance 
the  undertaking  and  superintend  the  work. 
His  proposals  were  accepted,  and  on  the  3rd 
of  April  1900,  he  became  president  of  the  com- 
pany, and  signed  a  contract  by  which  he  bound 
himself  to  construct  canals,  at  a  cost  of  not  more 
than  $150,000,  which  would  carry  to  the  Impe- 
rial Valley  400,000  acre-feet  of  water  per  annum.1 
Mr.  Chaffey  and  his  associates  modified  the 
1  Andrew  M.  Chaffey. 
23 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

plan  of  Mr.  Rockwood  by  taking  water  from  the 
Colorado  at  Pilot  Knob,  nearly  opposite  Yuma, 
instead  of  at  Potholes,  twelve  miles  above. 
Putting  in  a  head-gate  there,  they  carried  their 
main  canal  southward  across  the  Mexican 
boundary,  in  a  course  nearly  parallel  with  the 
river,  until  they  reached  the  barranca,  or  dry 
overflow  channel,  known  as  the  Alamo.  As 
this  ancient  watercourse  meandered  westward 
in  the  direction  of  the  Salton  Sink,  they  were 
able  to  clear  it  out,  enlarge  it,  and  utilize  most 
of  it  as  a  part  of  their  irrigation  system.  Then, 
at  a  point  about  forty  miles  west  of  the  Colo- 
rado, they  carried  their  canal  northward,  across 
the  boundary  line  again,  into  southern  Cal- 
ifornia. The  work  throughout  was  pushed 
with  great  energy,  and  on  the  i4th  of  May, 
1901,  a  little  more  than  a  year  after  Mr.  Charley 
assumed  direction  of  affairs,  water  was  turned 
in  at  the  Pilot  Knob  head-gate,  and  the  irriga- 
tion of  the  Salton  Sink  became  a  certainty,  if 
not  a  fully  accomplished  fact. 

As  the  California  Development  Co.  was  a 
water-selling  company  only,  and  had  no  pro- 
prietary interest  in  the  lands  to  be  irrigated,  it 
was  thought  best  to  form  another  organization 
for  the  promotion  of  settlement;  and  in  March 
1901  the  Imperial  Land  Company  was  incor- 

24 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

porated  for  the  purpose  of  attracting  colonists, 
laying  out  town  sites,  and  developing  the  Sink 
by  bringing  its  lands  into  cultivation.  Then 
Mr.  Chaffey  and  the  Land  Company  began  an 
advertising  campaign  for  the  purpose  of  inter- 
esting the  general  public  in  the  scheme;  and  in 
order  not  to  frighten  settlers  and  small  investors 
by  using  in  their  advertisements  and  circulars 
the  ominous  words  "desert"  and  "Sink," 
they  changed  the  name  of  the  basin  that  they 
proposed  to  irrigate  and  called  it  "The  Im- 
perial Valley."  This  title  was  evidently  allur- 
ing, because  it  attracted  small  investors  in  all 
parts  of  the  East,  and  particularly  in  New 
England.  The  Development  Company's  stock 
was  bought,  for  example,  in  places  as  far  away 
from  the  Sal  ton  Sink  as  Boston,  Concord,  Hope- 
dale  and  Waverley,  Mass.;  Barre  and  Mont- 
pelier,  Vt. ;  Portsmouth,  N.  H. ;  Elgin,  111. ;  Port- 
land, Oregon;  and  Toronto,  Canada.1  Settlers 
soon  began  to  come  in;  mutual  water  companies 
were  organized;  and  before  the  3rd  of  April  1902, 
when  Mr.  Chaffey  severed  his  connection  with 
the  company,  four  hundred  miles  of  irrigating 
ditches  had  been  dug,  and  water  was  available 
for  100,000  acres  or  more  of  irrigable  land.2 

1  List  of  stockholders  in  Sou.  Pac.  office,  N.  Y. 

2  Andrew  M.  Chaffey. 

25 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

About  this  time,  however,  the  future  of  the 
Valley  was  seriously  imperilled  by  unfavorable 
reports  concerning  its  soil.  In  the  early  part 
of  1902,  the  Bureau  of  Soils  of  the  U.  S. 
Agricultural  Department  published  the  results 
of  a  survey  of  the  irrigable  lands  in  the  Colorado 
Desert,  and  reported  that  they  were  so  im- 
pregnated with  alkali  that  very  few  things 
could  be  successfully  grown  on  them. 

"One  hundred  and  twenty  five  thousand  acres 
of  land'7  (the  report  said)  "have  already  been 
taken  up  by  prospective  settlers,  many  of  whom 
talk  of  planting  crops  which  it  will  be  absolutely 
impossible  to  grow.  They  must  early  find  that 
it  will  be  useless  to  attempt  their  growth.  .  .  . 
No  doubt  the  best  thing  to  do  is  to  raise  such 
crops  as  sugar  beet,  sorghum,  and  date  palm 
(if  the  climate  will  permit),  that  are  suited  to 
such  alkali  conditions,  and  abandon  as  worth- 
less the  lands  which  contain  too  much  alkali 
to  grow  those  crops."  ("Field  Operations  of 
the  Bureau  of  Soils,  U.  S.  Department  of  Agri- 
culture," 1901,  p.  587.) 

This  report,  which  was  widely  quoted  and 
commented  upon,  acted  as  a  serious  check  to  the 
colonization  of  the  Valley;  and  if  it  had  been 
made  two  or  three  years  earlier,  it  might  have 
been  fatal  to  the  whole  irrigation  project. 
Fortunately,  however,  the  crops  raised  by  a  few 

26 


MAP  OF  -- 

COLORADO  DELTA 

AND 

IMPERIAL  VALLEY 
MILES 


Colorado  Delta  and  Imperial  Valley     • 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

fanners  who  had  already  been  cultivating  this 
" alkali  impregnated"  land  proved  conclusively 
that  the  report  of  the  analysis  of  the  soil  made 
by  the  Government  experts  was  unduly  pessi- 
mistic, if  not  wholly  erroneous.  Almost  every- 
thing that  was  tried  did  grow,  in  spite  of  expert 
predictions,  and  the  practical  experience  of 
men  on  the  ground  gradually  revived  public 
confidence  in  the  productiveness  of  the  irri- 
gated lands.  The  colonization  and  develop- 
ment of  the  Valley  then  proceeded  with  great 
rapidity.  The  two  thousand  settlers  on  the 
ground  at  the  end  of  1902  increased  to  seven 
thousand  in  1903  and  to  more  than  ten  thousand 
in  1904.  A  branch  of  the  Southern  Pacific  rail- 
road was  built  through  the  Valley  from  Imperial 
Junction  to  Calexico  and  Mexicali;  town  sites 
were  laid  out  in  six  or  seven  different  places;  the 
water  system  was  extended  by  the  digging  of 
nearly  four  hundred  additional  miles  of  irrigating 
ditches  and  canals;  and  before  the  ist  of  Jan- 
uary 1905,  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand 
acres  of  reclaimed  land  were  actually  under 
cultivation,  while  two  hundred  thousand  acres 
more  had  been  covered  by  water  stock. 

The  observed  fertility  of  the  soil  completely 
discredited  the  reports  of  the  Government  ex- 
perts, and  more  than  justified  the  prediction 

28 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

made  by  Professor  Blake  half  a  century  before 
that  when  the  Sink  should  be  supplied  with 
water,  it  would  produce  "crops  of  almost  any 
kind."  Grapes,  melons  and  garden  vegetables 
matured  in  the  Valley  earlier  than  in  any  other 
part  of  California;  barley  was  a  profitable  crop; 
alfalfa  could  be  cut  five  or  six  times  a  year;  and 
the  finest  quality  of  long-staple  Egyptian  cotton 
yielded  more  than  a  bale  (500  pounds)  to  the 
acre.  Experiments  proved  also  that  the  climate 
and  soil  were  well  adapted  to  the  culture  of 
grapes,  grapefruit,  oranges,  lemons,  olives,  figs, 
dates,  pomegranates,  apricots,  peaches  and 
pears. 

The  fear  that  men  would  not  be  willing  or 
able  to  do  hard  work  in  the  hot  climate  of  the 
valley  proved  to  be  wholly  groundless.  Great 
heat  is  not  necessarily  weakening  or  prostrating 
unless  it  is  accompanied  with  great  humidity, 
and  the  air  of  the  Valley  is  at  all  seasons  ex- 
tremely dry.  In  a  discussion  of  this  subject, 
Mr.  H.  T.  Cory,  formerly  chief  engineer  of  the 
California  Development  Co.,  says: 

"The  climate  of  the  region,  with  its  long,  hot, 
dry  summers,  is  peculiarly  favorable  to  agri- 
cultural luxuriance.  Thus  it  is  that  here  the 
very  earliest  grapes,  fruits  and  vegetables  are 
produced  for  the  United  States  market,  with 

29 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

the  consequent  advantage  of  commanding  the 
highest  prices.  This  is  notably  true  of  the 
Imperial  Valley  cantaloupe,  now  famous  all  over 
this  country,  and  of  the  early  grapes,  asparagus 
etc.  On  account  of  the  very  low  humidity  and 
gentle  winds  which  blow  most  of  the  time  in 
hot  weather,  the  sensible  temperature — which 
is  indicated  by  the  wet-bulb  thermometer  read- 
ings and  gives  the  measure  of  heat  felt  by  the 
human  body — is  much  less  than  the  actual  tem- 
perature as  measured  by  the  dry  bulb.  It  is  con- 
servative to  say  that  a  temperature  of  no  hi 
Imperial  Valley  is  not  more  uncomfortable  than 
95  in  Los  Angeles,  or  85  in  the  more  humid  sec- 
tions of  the  Eastern  States.  Furthermore  the 
nights  are  always  cool,  the  low  humidity  result- 
ing in  rapid  and  large  daily  temperature  varia- 
tions." 

Under  these  favoring  conditions  of  soil  and 
climate,  it  seemed  almost  certain,  in  1904,  that 
the  Imperial  Valley  would  have  a  great  and 
prosperous  future;  but  no  forecast  in  that  re- 
gion is  trustworthy  unless  it  takes  into  account 
the  irrigating  agency,  as  well  as  the  climate  and 
the  soil.  The  Colorado  River  created  the 
Salton  Sink,  and  made  fertile  the  Imperial 
Valley;  but  it  could  destroy,  as  well  as  create; 
and  in  1904  it  showed  itself  in  a  new  aspect  and 
threatened  the  Valley  with  a  terrible  calamity. 


i 


m^ 


A  Part  of  the  Colorado  River  Watershed.     The  Grand  Canon 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

THE  RUNAWAY  RIVER 

The  most  serious  problem  with  which  engi- 
neers have  to  deal  in  the  irrigation  of  arid  land 
from  a  turbid  river  is  the  getting  rid  of  silt,  and 
this  problem  is  a  particularly  difficult  one  in 
the  Imperial  Valley,  owing  to  the  immense 
amount  of  sediment  that  the  irrigating  water 
contains.  The  Colorado  River,  until  after  it 
passes  the  Grand  Canon,  is  almost  everywhere 
a  swift,  turbulent  stream,  with  great  eroding 
capacity.  As  Mr.  E.  C.  LaRue  has  said,  in  a 
brief  but  graphic  description  of  it, 

"When  the  snows  melt  in  the  Rocky  and 
Wind  River  Mountains,  a  million  cascade 
brooks  unite  to  form  a  thousand  torrent  creeks; 
a  thousand  torrent  creeks  unite  to  form  half  a 
hundred  rivers  beset  with  cataracts;  half  a 
hundred  roaring  rivers  unite  to  form  the  Colo- 
rado, which  flows,  a  mad,  turbid  stream,  into1 
the  Gulf  of  California."  (" Colorado  River  and 
Its  Utilization,"  a  Geological  Survey  report, 
Government  Printing  Office,  Washington  1916.) 

Such  a  river,  naturally,  dissolves  the  earth 
and  gnaws  the  rocks  over  which  it  tears  its  way, 
and  takes  up  millions  of  tons  of  solid  matter,  in 
the  shape  of  gravel,  sand  and  finely  pulverized 
soil.  This  great  volume  of  sediment,  when 

31 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

finally  dropped,  not  only  tends  to  change  the 
river's  course  by  creating  bars  at  or  near  its 
mouth,  but  gradually  fills  up  the  irrigating 
ditches  and  canals  and  thus  lessens  their  carry- 
ing capacity.  \  A  single  day's  supply  of  water 
for  the  Imperial  Valley  contains  silt  enough 
to  make  a  levee  twenty  feet  high,  twenty  feet 
wide,  and  one  mile  long.  (Imperial  Valley 
Press,  July  25  1916).  If  this  silt  is  not  dredged 
out,  sluiced  out,  or  collected  in  a  settling  basin, 
it  eventually  raises  the  beds  of  the  canals,  fills 
the  ditches,  and  chokes  up  the  whole  irrigation 
system. 

The  managers  of  the  California  Development 
Co.  had  difficulty,  almost  from  the  first,  in 
keeping  their  waterways  open.  As  more  and 
more  land  was  brought  into  cultivation,  more 
and  more  water  was  required,  wrhile  the  silting 
up  of  the  canals  lessened  the  ability  of  the  com- 
pany to  meet  the  constantly  increasing  de- 
mand. There  was  a  shortage  as  early  as  the 
winter  of  1902-3;  but  the  situation  did  not  be- 
come serious  until  the  following  year,  when  the 
main  canal,  for  a  distance  of  four  miles  below 
the  intake,  became  so  silted  up  that  it  could 
not  possibly  carry  the  volume  of  water  that  was 
imperatively  needed.  An  attempt  was  made 
to  remedy  this  state  of  affairs  by  putting  in  a 

32 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

waste-gate,  eight  miles  below  the  intake,  for 
the  purpose  of  sluicing  out  the  channel  in  time 
of  high  water. 

"The  idea"  (as  stated  by  Mr.  Cory)  "was  to 
divert  a  large  quantity  of  water  during  the  flood 
season,  waste  it  through  the  Best  waste-gate, 
and  in  this  way  scour  out  the  upper  portion  of 
the  canal.  At  first,  the  action  was  as  expected, 
and  some  two  feet  in  the  bottom  were  carried 
away.  When,  however,  the  river  reached  its 
maximum  height,  .  .  .  and  carried  an  exces- 
sive silt  content,  especially  of  the  heavier  and 
sandy  type,  this  scouring  action  was  entirely 
overcome,  and  the  bottom  of  this  stretch  was 
raised  approximately  one  foot  higher  than  dur- 
ing the  previous  year." 

This  silting  up  of  the  main  canal,  and  the 
consequent  reduction  of  its  carrying  capacity, 
caused  great  injury  to  the  agricultural  interests 
of  the  Valley.  Crops  in  many  places  perished 
for  lack  of  water,  and  hundreds  of  farmers  put 
in  damage  claims,  which  amounted  in  the  aggre- 
gate to  half  a  million  dollars.  In  the  late  sum- 
mer of  1904,  it  became  evident  that  radical 
measures  would  have  to  be  taken  at  once  to 
increase  the  water  supply.  As  the  managers 
of  the  company  had  neither  the  financial  means 
nor  the  requisite  machinery  for  quickly  dredging 
out  the  silted  part  of  the  canal,  they  decided, 

33 


'//  1 1  ll 

CALIFORNIA  /   '       BOUNDARY 
MEXICO"    '*' 7       LINE 


Upper  Mexican 
' 


Lower 
Mexican  Heading 

r.  /904. 

About  40  To  30  ft  wide 
and  6  to  7  ft  Jeep. 


/mperial    Canal 

SKETCH 

Situation  in 
the  Sprina  of  1905 
at  Colorado  River 


The  Three  Headings  (or  Intakes),  in  Spring  of  1905 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

in  September  of  that  year,  to  cut  a  new^ntake 
from  the  river  at  a  point  about  four  miles  south 
of  the  international  boundary.  This  would 
eliminate  the  choked-up  part  of  the  canal,  and 
let  water  directly  into  the  part  that  was  unob- 
structed. 

If  President  Heber  and  Chief  Engineer  Rock- 
wood  had  been  aware  of  the  fact  that  the  Colo- 
rado was  even  then  preparing  to  pour  its  waters 
into  the  Salton  Sink,  by  making  one  of  its  semi- 
millennial  changes  of  course,  they  might  perhaps 
have  fortified  the  western  bank  instead  of 
cutting  through  it;  but  there  was  little  or  noth- 
ing to  show  the  extreme  instability  of  the  con- 
ditions that  were  then  determining  the  trend  of 
the  river  across  its  delta,  and  the  idea  that  it 
might  burst  through  this  intake  and  again  turn 
the  Valley  into  a  fresh- water  lake  does  not  seem 
to  have  occurred  to  anyone.  The  cutting  was 
therefore  made  and  the  water  shortage  relieved; 
but  at  the  cost  of  imminent  peril  to  the  whole 
Valley  and  its  twelve  thousand  inhabitants. 

In  view  of  the  tremendous  and  disastrous 
consequences  of  this  measure,  it  is  only  fair 
that  Chief  Engineer  Rockwood  should  be  al- 
lowed to  state,  with  some  fullness,  his  reasons 
for  adopting  it,  and  for  failing  to  put  in  a  head- 
gate  to  control  the  flow  of  water  through  the 

35 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

channel  and  thus  prevent  its  enlargement.  In 
an  article  entitled  "Born  of  the  Desert,"  pub- 
lished in  the  second  annual  magazine  number 
of  the  Calexico  Chronicle,  in  May  1909,  he  sets 
forth  his  reasons  in  the  following  words : 

"  As  soon  as  the  summer  flood  (1904)  dropped, 
I  discovered  that  instead  of  the  bottom"  (of  the 
canal)  "being  lower,  it  was  approximately  one 
foot  above  that  of  the  year  previous.  .  .  .  We 
knew  that  with  the  dredging  tools  which  we  had 
it  would  be  impossible  to  dredge  out  this  four 
miles  of  canal  in  sufficient  time  for  the  uses  of 
the  Valley,  providing  the  water  in  the  river 
should  drop  as  low  as  it  had  the  previous 
year.  .  .  .  We  were  then  confronted  with  the 
proposition  of  doing  one  of  two  things,  either 
cutting  a  new  heading  from  the  canal  to  the 
river  below  the  silted  four-mile  section  of  the 
canal,  or  else  allowing  the  Valley  to  pass  through 
another  winter  with  an  insufficient  water  supply. 
The  latter  proposition  we  could  not  face,  for 
the  reason  that  the  people  of  the  Valley  had  an 
absolute  right  to  demand  that  water  should  be 
furnished  them,  and  it  was  questionable  in  our 
minds  as  to  whether  we  would  be  able  to  keep 
out  of  bankruptcy  if  we  were  to  be  confronted 
by  another  period  of  shortage  in  the  coming 
season  of  1904-1905. 

"  The  cutting  of  the  lower  intake,  after  mature 
deliberation,  and  upon  the  insistence  of  several 
of  the  leading  men  of  the  Valley,  was  decided 

36 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

upon.  We  hesitated  about  making  this  cut, 
not  so  much  because  we  believed  we  were  in- 
curring danger  of  the  river's  breaking  through, 
as  from  the  fact  that  we  had  been  unable  to 
obtain  the  consent  of  the  Government  of  Mexico 
to  make  it,  and  we  believed  that  we  were  jeop- 
ardizing our  Mexican  rights  should  the  cut  be 
made  without  the  consent  of  the  Government. 
On  a  telegraphic  communication,  however,  from 
our  attorney  in  the  City  of  Mexico,  to  go  ahead 
and  make  the  cut,  we  did  so,  under  the  presump- 
tion that  he  had  obtained  the  necessary  permit 
from  the  Mexican  authorities.  It  was  some 
time  after  this,  in  fact  after  the  cut  was  made 
in  the  river,  before  we  discovered  that  he  had 
been  unable  to  obtain  the  formal  permit,  but 
had  simply  obtained  the  promise  of  certain 
officials  that  we  would  not  be  interfered  with, 
providing  that  plans  were  at  once  submitted  for 
the  necessary  controlling  structures  to  be  placed 
in  this  heading. 

"  ...  In  cutting  from  the  main  canal  to  the 
river  at  this  point,  we  had  to  dredge  a  distance 
of  3300  feet  only,  through  easy  material  to  re- 
move, while  an  attempt  to  dredge  out  the  main 
canal  above  would  have  meant  the  dredging  of 
four  miles  of  very  difficult  material.  We  began 
the  cut  the  latter  end  of  September  and  com- 
pleted it  in  about  three  weeks.  As  soon  as  the 
cut  was  decided  upon,  elaborate  plans  for  a 
controlling  gate  were  immediately  started,  and 
when  completed,  early  in  November,  were  im- 
mediately forwarded  to  the  City  of  Mexico  for 

37 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

the  approval  of  the  engineers  of  the  Mexican 
Government,  without  whose  approval  we  had 
no  authority  or  right  to  construct  the  gate. 
Notwithstanding  the  insistence  of  our  attorney 
in  the  City  of  Mexico,  and  various  telegraphic 
communications  insisting  upon  this  approval 
being  hurried,  we  were  unable  to  obtain  it  until 
twelve  months  afterward,  namely,  the  month 
of  December  1905. 

"In  the  meantime,  serious  trouble  had  begun. 
We  have  since  been  accused  of  gross  negligence 
and  criminal  carelessness  in  making  this  cut; 
but  I  doubt  as  to  whether  anyone  should  be 
accused  of  negligence,  or  carelessness,  in  failing 
to  foresee  what  had  never  happened  before.  We 
had  before  us  at  the  time  the  history  of  the 
river  as  shown  by  the  rod-readings  kept  at 
Yuma  for  a  period  of  twenty  seven  years.  In 
the  twenty  seven  years  there  had  been  but 
three  winter  floods.  In  no  winter  of  the  twenty 
seven  had  there  been  two  winter  floods.  It 
was  not  probable,  then,  that  there  would  be  any 
winter  flood  to  enlarge  the  cut  made  by  us,  and 
without  doubt,  as  it  seemed  to  us,  we  would 
be  able  to  close  the  cut,  before  the  approach 
of  the  summer  flood,  by  the  same  means  that 
we  had  used  in  closing  the  cut  for  three  succes- 
sive years  around  the  Chaff ey  gate  at  the  head 
of  the  canal.1  During  this  winter  of  1905, 

1  The  sill  of  the  Chaffey  gate  proved  to  be  too  high  for  low 
stages  of  water,  and  a  canal,  at  a  lower  level,  was  cut  around 
the  structure  and  closed  every  year  with  a  brush-and-earth 
dam  before  the  approach  of  the  summer  flood.  G.  K. 

38 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

however,  we  had  more  than  one  winter  flood. 
The  first  flood  came,  I  believe,  about  the  first  of 
February,  but  did  not  enlarge  the  lower  intake. 
On  the  contrary,  it  caused  such  a  silt  deposit 
in  the  lower  intake  that  I  found  it  necessary, 
after  the  flood  had  passed,  to  put  the  dredge 
through  in  order  to  deepen  the  channel  suffi- 
ciently to  allow  water  to  come  into  the  valley 
for  the  use  of  the  people.  This  was  followed 
shortly  by  another  heavy  flood  that  did  not 
erode  the  banks  of  the  intake,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, the  same  as  the  first,  caused  a  deposit  of 
silt  and  a  necessary  dredging.  We  were  not 
alarmed  by  these  floods,  as  it  was  still  very  early 
in  the  season.  No  damage  had  been  done  by 
them,  and  we  still  believed  that  there  would 
be  no  difficulty  in  closing  the  intake  before  the 
approach  of  the  summer  flood,  which  was  the 
only  one  we  feared.  However,  the  first  two 
floods  were  followed  by  a  third,  coming  some- 
time in  March,  and  this  was  sufficient  notice 
to  us  that  we  were  up  against  a  very  unusual 
season,  something  unknown  in  the  history  of 
the  river  as  far  back  as  we  were  able  to  reach; 
and  as  it  was  now  approaching  the  season  of 
the  year  when  we  might  reasonably  expect  the 
river  surface  to  remain  at  an  elevation  that 
would  allow  sufficient  water  for  the  uses  of  the 
Valley  to  be  gotten  through  the  upper  intake, 
we  decided  to  close  the  lower. "  ("Born  of  the 
Desert/'  by  C.  R.  Rockwood,  Calexico  Chron- 
icle, May  1909.) 


39 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

At  the  time  when  the  first  attempt  to  close 
the  intake  was  made,  the  cutting  was  about 
sixty  feet  wide.  A  dam  of  piles,  brush  and 
sandbags  was  thrown  across  it  in  March  1905, 
but  it  had  hardly  been  completed  when  another 
flood  came  down  the  Colorado  and  swept  it 
away.  A  second  dam  of  the  same  kind,  built 
a  few  weeks  later,  shared  the  same  fate.  By 
the  middle  of  June,  the  river  was  discharging 
90,000  cubic  feet  of  water  per  second;  the  width 
of  the  lower  intake  had  increased  from  sixty 
feet  to  one  hundred  and  sixty;  water  was  over- 
flowing the  banks  of  the  main  canal  and  accumu- 
lating in  the  deepest  part  of  the  Sink;  and  a  new 
Salton  Sea  was  in  process  of  formation. 

Such  was  the  state  of  affairs  when  Mr.  Harri- 
man  and  the  Southern  Pacific  Railroad  Com- 
pany first  became  directly  interested  in  the 
problem  of  river  control.  Early  in  1905,  the 
California  Development  Co.,  finding  itself  in 
pecuniary  difficulties,  applied  to  Mr.  Julius 
Kruttschnitt,  General  Manager  of  the  Southern 
Pacific,  for  a  loan,  on  the  alleged  ground  that 
the  Imperial  Valley  was  furnishing  a  great  deal 
of  traffic  to  the  railroad,  and  the  irrigation  com- 
pany was  therefore  warranted  in  asking  for 
financial  assistance.  Mr.  Kruttschnitt,  how- 
ever, declined  to  consider  the  application.  The 

40 


Imperial   Canal 


Co/orado  River 
at 

Lower  Mexican  Heading 

June 


About  100  ft.  wide  and  20ft  deep  ^ 

3 


Lower  Intake  at  Time  of  Southern  Pacific  Loan 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

petitioners  then  addressed  the  President  of  the 
railroad  company,  Mr.  E.  H.  Harriman,  who, 
it  was  thought,  might  be  induced  to  give  the 
necessary  aid,  even  though  he  had  no  personal 
interest  in  the  Valley  and  no  connection  what- 
ever with  the  California  Development  Co. 
Mr.  Harriman,  as  a  man  of  imagination  and 
far-seeing  vision,  was  naturally  in  sympathy 
with  the  bold  attempt  to  irrigate  and  reclaim 
the  arid  lands  of  the  Colorado  Desert,  and 
when  the  matter  of  the  loan  was  presented  to 
him,  he  not  only  gave  it  immediate  considera- 
tion, but  ordered  an  investigation  and  a  report. 
He  finally  consented,  against  the  advice  of  Mr. 
Kruttschnitt  and  other  counsellors,  to  loan  the 
Development  Company  $200,000,  "to  be  used 
in  paying  off  certain  of  its  floating  indebtedness 
and  in  completing  and  perfecting  its  canal  sys- 
tem. ' '  Inasmuch,  however,  as  the  financial  man- 
agement of  the  irrigation  company  had  not  al- 
.ways  been  judicious,  Mr.  Harriman  and  the 
Southern  Pacific  stipulated  that  they  should 
have  the  right  to  select  three  of  its  directors,  one 
of  whom  should  be  president,  and  that  fifty  one 
per  cent  of  its  stock  (6300  shares)  should  be 
placed  in  the  hands  of  a  trustee  as  collateral  se- 
curity for  the  loan.  This  stipulation  was  agreed 
to,  and  on  the  2oth  of  June  1905,  the  Southern 

42 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

Pacific  Company,  as  chief  creditor,  took  tem- 
porary control  of  the  California  Development 
Company  by  selecting  three  of  its  directors, 
and  by  appointing  as  its  president  Mr.  Epes 
Randolph,  of  Tucson,  who  was  then  acting  also 
as  president  of  the  Harriman  Lines  in  Arizona 
and  Mexico.1 

When  Mr.  Harriman  and  the  Southern  Pa- 
cific thus  took  over  the  management  of  the 
California  Development  Company,  they  had 
no  intention  of  assuming  its  responsibilities, 
directing  its  engineering  work,  or  deriving 
revenue  from  its  operations.  All  they  aimed 
to  do  was  to  see  that  the  money  loaned  was 

1  Mr.  Randolph  was  a  distinguished  civil  engineer  and 
railroad  manager,  who  had  been,  at  one  time,  superintendent 
of  the  Tucson  division  of  the  Southern  Pacific  under  Mr. 
C.  P.  Huntington.  After  the  latter's  death,  he  went  to  Los 
Angeles,  where  he  built  and  managed  Mr.  H.  E.  Hunting- 
ton's  interurban  system  of  electric  railways  and  where  he 
made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Harriman.  Finding  that  his 
health  would  not  permit  him  to  live  in  the  cb'mate  of  Los 
Angeles,  he  returned  in  1904  to  Arizona,  where  he  was  ap- 
pointed president  of  the  Arizona  Eastern  Railroad  Company 
and  the  Southern  Pacific  Railroad  Company  of  Mexico — 
Harriman  lines.  Mr.  Randolph,  at  that  time,  was  regarded 
as  one  of  the  ablest  civil  engineers  in  the  United  States,  and 
he  had  already  had  much  experience  in  dealing  with  river- 
control  problems  in  the  South.  He  was  also  one  of  Mr. 
Harriman's  most  trusted  counsellors,  and  it  was  upon  his 
recommendation  that  the  Southern  Pacific  Company's  lines 
were  extended  into  Mexico. 

43 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

honestly  and  judiciously  spent.  The  financial 
management  of  the  company,  had  not  pre- 
viously been  above  criticism,  to  say  the  least; 
and  Mr.  Harriman  was  fully  justified  in  taking 
such  control  as  might  be  necessary  to  ensure 
proper  expenditure  of  the  funds  that  the  South- 
ern Pacific  Company  furnished.  From  the  rep- 
resentations made  by  the  Development  Com- 
pany at  that  time,  it  was  thought  that  the 
lower  Mexican  intake  might  be  closed  at  a  cost 
of  not  more  than  $20,000,  and  the  Company 
proposed  to  use  the  remainder  of  the  $200,000 
loan  in  "completing  and  perfecting  its  canal  sys- 
tem/7 under  the  direction  of  its  own  technical 
experts.  When,  however,  President  Randolph 
made  a  personal  investigation  of  the  state  of 
affairs,  shortly  after  his  appointment,  he 
found  the  situation  much  more  serious  than  the 
Development  Company  had  represented  it  to 
be,  and  telegraphed  Mr.  Harriman  that  the  Im- 
perial Valley  could  not  be  saved  by  the  expendi- 
ture of  $200,000.  To  control  the  river,  he  said, 
under  the  conditions  then  existing,  would  be  ex- 
tremely difficult.  Nobody  could  foresee  what 
would  be  the  ultimate  cost  of  the  engineering 
operations,  but  it  "might  easily  run  into  three 
quarters  of  a  million  dollars." 

Mr.  Harriman  could  have  insisted,  even  then, 
44 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

upon  a  return  of  the  unspent  loan,  and  could 
have  withdrawn  from  the  financially  hazardous 
undertaking;  but  instead  of  doing  this,  he  tele- 
graphed President  Randolph:  "Are  you  certain 
you  can  put  the  river  back  into  the  old  chan- 
nel?" Mr.  Randolph  replied:  "I  am  certain 
that  it  can  be  done."  Then  wired  Mr.  Harri- 
man:  "Go  ahead  and  do  it." 

As  Chief  Engineer  Rockwood  was  thought  to 
be  familiar  with  the  problem  of  river  control, 
and  quite  competent  to  deal  with  it,  he  was 
allowed,  at  first,  to  take  such  measures  for 
closing  the  intake  as  seemed  to  him  best.  He 
had  made  the  cutting  long  before  the  Southern 
Pacific  had  anything  to  do  with  the  irrigation 
of  the  Valley,  and  upon  him,  primarily,  devolved 
the  responsibility  of  averting  consequences  that 
might  be  disastrous. 

Although  the  Mexican  cutting,  at  that  time, 
had  virtually  become  a  crevasse,  the  flow 
through  it  was  not  great  enough  to  endanger 
the  cultivated  lands  of  the  valley.  The  excess 
of  water  overflowed  the  banks  of  the  canal — the 
old  Alamo  barranca — but  it  ran  into  the  deepest 
part  of  the  Sink,  where  it  slowly  accumulated 
without  flooding  anything  except  the  works  of 
the  New  Liverpool  Salt  Company.  Civil  Engi- 
neer C.  E.  Grunsky,  of  the  U.  S.  Reclamation 

45 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

Service,  who  made  an  inspection  of  the  intake 
three  days  after  the  loan  to  the  California  De- 
velopment Company,  described  the  situation 
as  "not  serious,  but  sufficiently  alarming  to 
require  some  attention."  The  most  disquiet- 
ing feature  of  it  was  the  steepness  of  the  incline 
toward  the  Imperial  Valley  as  compared  with 
that  toward  the  Gulf  of  California.  The  fall  of 
the  Colorado  from  the  intake  to  the  Gulf  was 
only  one  hundred  feet,  while  that  from  the  in- 
take to  the  bottom  of  the  Valley  was  nearly 
four  hundred  feet.  As  the  distance  was  about 
the  same,  either  way,  the  Valley  incline  was 
approximately  four  times  as  steep  as  the  river- 
bed incline,  and  if  the  whole  stream  should 
break  through  the  intake  and  go  down  the 
steeper  slope,  the  velocity  of  the  current  would 
make  the  stopping  of  it  extremely  difficult,  if 
not  absolutely  impossible.  When  a  turbulent 
river,  in  flood,  discharges  at  the  rate  of  100,000 
cubic  feet  per  second  down  an  easily  eroded  and 
comparatively  steep  declivity  into  an  im- 
mense basin  four  hundred  feet  deep,  it  soon 
gets  beyond  control. 

The  difficulty  of  dealing  with  these  condi- 
tions was  greatly  increased  by  the  impossibility 
of  predicting  or  anticipating  floods.  The  an- 
nual rise  of  the  Colorado,  above  its  junction 

46 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

with  the  Gila,  begins  in  the  spring,  reaches  its 
maximum  in  July,  and  subsides  to  normal 
about  the  middle  of  August.  This  period  of 
high  water  is  fairly  regular  and  may  be  counted 
upon.  Floods  in  the  drainage  basin  of  the  Gila, 
however,  are  capricious,  occur  at  all  seasons  of 
the  year,  and  are  particularly  violent  in  the 
fall  and  winter  months.  "These  floods,"  as 
Mr.  Cory  says,  "are  far  more  to  be  feared  and 
reckoned  with,  in  preparing  and  conducting 
engineering  work  along  the  lower  Colorado 
River,  than  anything  coming  down  the  Colo- 
rado River  proper,"  partly  because  they  come 
suddenly  and  unexpectedly,  and  partly  because 
they  carry  immense  quantities  of  driftwood. 
During  the  Gila  flood  of  November  29-30,  1905, 
the  water  at  Yuma  rose  ten  feet  in  ten  hours, 
with  a  maximum  discharge  of  102,000  cubic 
feet  per  second,  while  driftwood  almost  com- 
pletely covered  the  water  surface.  Such  floods, 
coming  with  little  or  no  warning,  are  almost 
irresistible. 

When,  in  July  1905,  the  summer  flood  in  the 
Colorado  began  to  subside,  Chief  Engineer 
Rockwood  determined  to  fend  off  the  main 
current,  and  lessen  the  pressure  on  the  crevasse, 
by  means  of  a  jetty.  Just  opposite  the  intake 
was  a  bush-overgrown  island,  five  eighths  of  a 

47 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

mile  long  by  a  quarter  of  a  mile  wide,  which 
split  the  river  into  two  channels.  Across  the 
western  channel,  from  the  head  of  the  island  to 
the  bank,  a  semi-barrier  was  built,  of  piling, 
barbed  wire  and  brush.  This  obstruction,  it 
was  thought,  might  check  the  flow  into  the 
western  channel,  cause  a  deposit  of  heavy  silt, 
and  eventually  create  a  bar  which  would  deflect 
the  main  current  around  the  northern  end  of 
the  island  and  thus  carry  it  away  from  the 
mouth  of  the  crevasse.  The  attempt  was  only 
partly  successful.  A  bar  was  formed,  but  it 
did  not  completely  close  the  channel,  nor  de- 
flect the  main  current.  There  was  still  an 
opening,  about  one  hundred  and  twenty  five 
feet  in  width,  through  which  the  rush  of  water 
was  so  great  that  it  could  not  be  controlled. 
The  attempt  to  deflect  the  main  current  into 
the  eastern  channel,  by  means  of  a  jetty,  was 
then  abandoned. 

Up  to  this  time,  the  Southern  Pacific  Com- 
pany had  not  taken  part  directly  in  the  work 
of  river  control.  After  the  failure  of  the  jetty, 
however,  in  August  1905,  President  Randolph 
sent  his  assistant,  Mr.  H.  T.  Cory,1  to  the  scene 

1  Mr.  Cory  was  a  talented  civil  engineer  who  had  left  his 
professorial  chair  in  the  engineering  department  of  the 
University  of  Cincinnati  to  enter  the  service  of  the  Southern 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

of  operations,  with  instructions  to  confer  with 
Chief  Engineer  Rockwood  and  ascertain  what 
his  views  and  intentions  were.  Mr.  Rock- 
wood,  at  that  time,  did  not  regard  the  situation 
as  at  all  alarming.  The  flow  through  the 
crevasse,  he  said,  was  doing  useful  work  in 
scouring  out  and  deepening  the  main  canal 
(the  old  Alamo  barranca)  and  there  was  little 
danger  that  the  whole  river  would  go  that  way. 
He  was  not  in  favor  of  closing  the  enlarged  in- 
take altogether,  because  that  would  shut  off 
the  water  supply  of  the  Imperial  Valley  and 
cause  more  damage  than  was  then  being  done 
by  the  river.  The  deeper  part  of  the  Salton 
Sink,  he  said,  was  a  natural  drainage  basin,  and 
as  it  was  much  below  the  zone  of  cultivation  in 
the  valley  as  a  whole,  the  accumulation  of  water 
in  it  was  not  likely  to  do  a  great  amount  of 
damage. 

"I  told  him,"  Mr.  Cory  says,  "that  I  thought 
the  situation  was  serious,  even  granting  all  he 
said  were  true;  that  he  would  better  shut  the 
break  right  away,  for  while  the  water  might  be 
doing  good  work  in  enlarging  the  canal  of  the 
California  Development  Company,  the  situa- 

Pacific  Railroad  system.  Just  prior  to  this  time — in  May 
1905 — he  had  been  appointed  assistant  to  President  Ran- 
dolph, with  headquarters  at  Tucson. 

49 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

tion  was  dangerous;  that,  it  was  playing  with 
fire." 

Throughout  the  month  of  August  1905,  the 
intake  continued  to  widen,  with  the  caving 
away  of  its  banks,  and  in  September  Mr.  Harri- 
man  and  President  Randolph  decided  that  an- 
other effort  must  be  made  either  to  close  the 
break,  or  to  regulate  and  control  the  flow  of 
water  through  it.  About  the  first  of  October, 
at  the  suggestion  and  under  the  supervision  of 
Mr.  E.  S.  Edinger,  a  Southern  Pacific  engineer, 
an  attempt  was  made  to  close  the  channel  west 
of  the  island  by  means  of  a  six-hundred-foot 
barrier-dam  of  piling,  brush-mattresses  and 
sandbags.  This  dam,  which  was  built  in  Oc- 
tober and  November  at  a  cost  of  about  $60,000, 
might  perhaps  have  checked  or  lessened  the 
flow  through  the  crevasse  if  nothing  unforeseen 
had  happened;  but  on  the  29th~3oth  of  No- 
vember a  tremendous  flood,  carrying  great 
masses  of  driftwood,  came  down  the  Gila  and 
increased  the  discharge  of  the  Colorado  from 
12,060  to  115,000  cubic  feet  per  second.  The 
dam  could  not  withstand  such  pressure,  and 
even  before  the  peak  of  the  flood  was  reached 
it  went  out  altogether,  leaving  hardly  a  vestige 
behind.  As  a  large  part  of  the  island  was 
eroded  and  carried  away  at  the  same  time, 

So 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

further  operations  in  this  locality  were  regarded 
as  impracticable.  The  crevasse  had  then 
widened  to  six  hundred  feet,  and  nearly  the 
whole  of  the  river  poured  through  it  into  the 
deepest  part  of  the  Sink,  where  there  was 
already  a  lake  with  a  surface  area  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  square  miles.  The  main  line  of  the 
Southern  Pacific,  in  many  places,  was  almost 
awash,  and  the  whole  population  of  the  Valley 
was  alarmed  by  the  prospect  of  being  drowned 
out.  If  the  break  could  not  be  closed  and  the 
river  brought  under  control  before  the  period 
of  high  water  in  the  spring  and  summer  of  1906, 
it  seemed  more  than  probable  that  sixty  miles 
of  the  Southern  Pacific  track  would  be  sub- 
merged; that  the  irrigation  system  of  the 
California  Development  Company  would  be 
destroyed;  and  that  the  whole  basin  of  the 
Imperial  Valley  would  ultimately  become  a 
fresh- water  lake. 

The  difficulty  of  dealing  with  this  menacing 
situation  was  greatly  increased  by  the  necessity 
of  furnishing  an  uninterrupted  supply  of  water 
to  the  farmers  of  the  vaUey  while  engineering 
operations  were  in  progress.  It  would  not  do 
to  shut  the  river  out  altogether,  because  that 
would  leave  without  irrigation  nearly  two  hun- 
dred square  miles  of  cultivated  land.  The 

51 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

Colorado  must  be  controlled,  but  not  wholly 
excluded.  Several  methods  of  solving  this 
problem  were  suggested,  but  the  only  two  that 
seemed  likely  to  succeed  were  advocated  by 
Consulting  Engineer  Schuyler  and  Chief  Engi- 
neer Rockwood.  Mr.  Schuyler  proposed  that  a 
new  steel-and-concrete  head-gate  be  put  in  near 
Pilot  Knob,  where  a  solid  rock  foundation 
could  be  secured;  that  the  four  miles  of  silted 
channel  be.  re-excavated  and  enlarged  by  a 
powerful  steam  dredge  specially  built  for  the 
purpose;  and  that  the  whole  low-water  flow  of 
the  river  be  then  turned  through  this  head-gate 
into  the  enlarged  canal  and  thence  into  the 
Alamo  barranca  west  of  the  break.  By  this 
means  the  settlers  would  be  continuously 
supplied  with  water,  while  the  crevasse-opening 
would  be  left  dry  enough  to  close  with  a  per- 
manent levee  or  dam.  The  whole  work,  it  was 
thought,  could  be  finished  in  three  months,  or  at 
least  before  the  coming  of  the  next  summer 
flood. 

Chief  Engineer  Rockwood' s  plan  also  in- 
volved the  building  of  a  new  head-gate,  but  he 
proposed  to  locate  it  on  the  northern  side  of  the 
intake,  and  to  carry  the  whole  low-water  flow 
of  the  river  through  it  by  means  of  an  excavated 
by-pass.  This,  too,  would  keep  the  settlers 

52 


Cana/ 


Colorado  River 

at 
L  ower  Mexican  Heading 

March /9,/906 


Excavtion  for 
Wooden  By-Pass  Gate 


aW 

jw^SjP 

& 


Lower  Intake  in  Spring  si  1906  (showing  site  oi  Rockwood  head-gate  and  first 
three  attempts  to  dose  the  break) 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

supplied  with  water  and  leave  the  crevasse- 
opening  dry  while  it  was  being  closed.  The 
chief  objection  to  the  latter  plan  was  that  the 
head-gate  would  necessarily  be  of  wood,  and 
would  have  to  stand  on  a  treacherous  founda- 
tion of  easily  eroded  silt  which  might  possibly 
be  undermined.  Late  in  November,  after  full 
consideration,  President  Randolph  decided  to 
try  both  plans  and  to  work  on  them  simulta- 
neously. Contracts  for  the  structural  steel  and 
iron  work  for  the  concrete  head-gate  were  let  in 
Los  Angeles;  the  machinery  for  the  850- ton 
floating  dredge  "Delta"  was  ordered  in  San 
Francisco;  materials  for  the  Rockwood  head- 
gate  were  collected  on  the  northern  side  of  the 
intake,  and  work  was  pushed  on  all  of  these 
structures  with  the  greatest  possible  energy 
throughout  the  winter.  In  spite,  however,  of  all 
efforts,  none  of  them  could  be  finished  in  the 
allotted  time.  The  steel-and-concrete  head- 
gate  was  not  completed  until  the  28th  of  June; 
the  dredge  "Delta,"  owing  to  the  partial  de- 
struction of  San  Francisco,  was  not  ready  until 
the  following  November,  and  even  the  Rock- 
wood  gate,  on  which  alternate  shifts  of  men  had 
worked  night  and  day,  was  not  in  working  order 
until  the  i8th  of  April.  Meanwhile,  the  summer 
flood  of  1906  had  begun,  with  a  discharge  of 

54 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

32,200  cubic  feet  per  second  through  the  cre- 
vasse. This  flow  would  have  exceeded  the  ca- 
pacity of  the  Rockwood  gate,  even  if  it  had  been 
possible  to  turn  the  river  through  the  by-pass 
that  led  to  it,  and  the  attempt  to  bring  the 
Colorado  under  control  was  again  temporarily 
abandoned. 

Then  a  long  series  of  misfortunes  and  catas- 
trophes followed,  one  after  another.  On  the 
1 8th  of  April,  1906,  San  Francisco  was  partially 
destroyed  by  earthquake  and  fire,  and  Mr.  Har- 
riman  hurried  to  the  scene  of  the  disaster  for  the 
purpose  of  affording  help.  President  Randolph 
soon  joined  him  there,  and,  at  the  first  oppor- 
tunity, described  to  him  the  almost  desperate 
state  of  affairs  in  the  Colorado  delta.  The 
California  Development  Company  had  used  up 
the  $200,000  loaned  to  it  by  the  Southern  Pa- 
cific the  previous  year;  the  river  was  still  un- 
controlled, and  the  impending  flood  threatened 
to  inundate  the  Valley  and  deprive  12,000  peo- 
ple of  their  property  and  homes.  Mr.  Harri- 
man  was  not  a  man  to  be  daunted  or  "rattled" 
by  a  sudden  and  menacing  emergency.  "There, 
in  the  bustle  and  confusion  of  temporary  offices, 
with  the  ruins  of  San  Francisco  still  smoking, 
with  the  facilities  of  his  roads  taxed  to  the 
utmost  in  carrying  people  away  from  the 

55 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

stricken  city,  with  the  wonderful  railway  sys- 
tem which  constituted  his  life  work  crippled  to 
an  unknown  extent,  and  with  the  financial 
demands  resulting  from  the  disaster  impossible 
to  determine,"  he  consented  to  advance  an  addi- 
tional sum  of  $250,000  for  controlling  the  Colo- 
rado River  and  protecting  the  Imperial  Valley. 
"  It  has  always  seemed  to  me/'  writes  Mr.  Cory, 
"that  this  was  really  the  most  remarkable  thing 
in  the  whole  series  of  extraordinary  happenings." 

With  the  promise  of  this  additional  sum  of 
$250,000,  President  Randolph  returned  to  the 
Imperial  Valley  to  take  up  again  the  fight  with 
the  runaway  river.  The  flood,  at  that  time, 
was  steadily  rising;  the  width  of  the  crevasse  had 
increased  to  a  quarter  of  a  mile,  and  the  Colo- 
rado was  pouring  into  the  Salton  basin  more 
than  four  billion  cubic  feet  of  water  every 
twenty  four  hours. 

On  the  i gth  of  April,  1906,  the  day  after  the 
San  Francisco  earthquake,  Mr.  C.  R.  Rock- 
wood,  who  had  been  the  chief  engineer  of  the 
California  Development  Company  for  about 
four  years,  tendered  his  resignation,  and  Mr. 
H.  T.  Cory,  President  Randolph's  assistant, 
was  appointed  in  his  place.  The  Southern 
Pacific  Company  then  assumed  full  control  and 
direction  of  defensive  operations,  and  all  sub- 

56 


A  Flood  Waterfall  in  Imperial  Valley,  Cutting  Back 


Nearer  View  of  Flood  Cataract  in  Imperial  Valley,  Cutting  Back 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

sequent  work  was  planned  and  executed  by  its 
engineers,  with  the  powerful  support  of  Mr. 
Harriman  and  his  great  railway  system. 

The  task  set  before  Messrs.  Randolph,  Cory, 
Hind  and  Clarke  was  one  that  might  well  have 
daunted  even  engineers  of  their  great  ability 
and  experience.  As  the  summer  flood  ap- 
proached its  maximum,  in  the  latter  part  of 
June,  the  crevasse  widened  to  more  than  half  a 
mile,  and  the  whole  river,  rushing  through  the 
break,  spread  out  over  an  area  eight  or  ten 
miles  in  width,  and  then,  collecting  in  separate 
streams  as  it  ran  down  the  slope  of  the  basin, 
discharged  at  last  into  the  Salton  Sea  through 
the  flooded  channel  of  the  New  River  barranca. 
Thousands  of  acres  of  land,  covered  with  grow- 
ing crops,  were  inundated,  and  thousands  of 
acres  more  were  so  eroded  and  furrowed  by  the 
torrential  streams  that  they  never  could  be  cul- 
tivated again.  The  works  of  the  New  Liver- 
pool Salt  Company  were  buried  under  sixty 
feet  of  water;  the  towns  of  Calexico  and  Mexi- 
cali  were  partially  destroyed,  and  in  many 
places  the  tracks  of  the  Inter-  California  Rail- 
road (a  branch  of  the  Southern  Pacific) 
and  the  Holtville  Interurban  were  deeply  sub- 
merged or  wholly  carried  away.  The  wooden 
flumes  which  carried  the  irrigating  water  over 

57 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

the  New  River  barranca  were  swept  down  into 
the  Salton  Sea,  and  30,000  acres  of  cultivated 
land  in  the  western  part  of  the  Valley  became 
dry,  barren  and  uninhabitable.  At  the  height 
of. the  flood,  the  Colorado  discharged  through 
the  crevasse  more  than  75,000  cubic  feet  of 
water  per  second,  or  six  billion  cubic  feet  every 
twenty  four  hours,  while  the  Salton  Sea,  into 
which  this  immense  volume  of  water  was  poured, 
rose  at  the  rate  of  seven  inches  per  day  over  an 
area  of  four  hundred  square  miles.  The  main 
line  of  the  Southern  Pacific  was  soon  inundated, 
and  five  times  in  the  course  of  the  summer  the 
company  had  to  move  its  track  to  higher  ground. 
The  most  dangerous  and  alarming  feature  of 
the  situation  was  the  "cutting  back"  of  the 
torrents  into  which  the  flood-water  collected 
as  it  rushed  down  the  delta  slope  toward  the 
Salton  Sea.  The  fine  silt  of  which  the  soil  was 
composed  washed  out  like  powdered  sugar,  and 
wherever  there  happened  to  be  a  strong  cur- 
rent, the  flow  soon  produced  a  miniature  rapid. 
The  rapid  then  became  a  cascade,  the  cascade 
grew  into  a  fall,  and  the  fall  finally  developed 
into  a  roaring  cataract,  which  "cut  back," 
up-stream,  at  the  rate  sometimes  of  four  thou- 
sand feet  a  day,  widening  as  it  receded,  and 
leaving  below  it  a  deep  gorge  with  almost  per- 

58 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

pendicular  walls/  Some  of  the  gorges  eroded 
in  the  light  friable  silt  by  these  receding  water- 
falls were  fifty  to  eighty  feet  deep  and  more  than 
a  thousand  feet  across.  It  was  estimated 
that  the  channels  thus  formed  during  the 
floods  of  1906  had  an  aggregate  length  of  more 
than  forty  miles,  and  that  the  solid  matter 
scoured  out  of  them  and  carried  down  into  the 
Salton  Sea  was  nearly  four  times  as  great  as  the 
whole  amount  excavated  in  the  digging  of  the 
Panama  Canal.  But  the  damage  actually  done 
by  these  receding  waterfalls  was  unimportant 
in  comparison  with  the  damage  that  they 
threatened  to  do.  If  one  of  them  should  "cut 
back'7  far  enough  to  break  into  the  irrigation 
system  of  the  California  Development  Com- 
pany, all  the  water  in  the  latter's  canals  and 
ditches  would  instantly  flow  down  into  the  deep 
gorge  below  the  cataract,  and  bring  about  a 
disaster  almost  unprecedented  in  history.  The 
twelve  thousand  settlers  in  the  desert  oasis  were 
wholly  dependent  upon  the  irrigation  system 
for  their  supply  of  drinking  water,  and  if  that 
supply  should  be  cut  off,  they  would  be  com- 
pelled by  thirst  either  to  camp  around  the 
margin  of  the  Salton  Sea,  which  was  ten  or 
fifteen  miles  away  from  most  of  them,  or  else 
get  out  of  the  valley  within  forty  eight  hours 

59 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

in  a  wild  precipitate  stampede.  Paradoxical 
as  it  may  seem,  the  danger  of  being  driven  out 
by  lack  of  water  was  even  greater  and  more 
immediate  than  the  danger  of  being  drowned 
out  by  the  rising  flood. 

The  changes  in  the  topography  of  the  Colo- 
rado delta  brought  about  by  the  crevasse  and 
the  floods  of  1906  were  greater  than  any  that 
had  occurred  there  in  the  three  preceding  cen- 
turies of  recorded  history.  In  referring  to  them 
Mr.  Cory  says: 

"The  effect  of  this  flood,  in  a  geological  way, 
was  of  extraordinary  interest  and  very  spec- 
tacular. In  nine  months,  the  runaway  waters 
of  the  Colorado  had  eroded  from  the  New  and 
Alamo  River  channels  and  carried  down  into 
the  Salton  Sea  a  yardage  almost  four  times  as 
great  as  that  of  the  entire  Panama  Canal.  The 
combined  length  of  the  channels  cut  out  was 
almost  forty  three  miles,  the  average  width 
being  one  thousand  feet  and  the  depth  fifty  feet. 
To  this  total  of  400,000,000  to  450,000,000  cubic 
yards  must  be  added  almost  ten  per  cent  for 
side  canons,  surface  erosions  etc.  Very  rarely, 

ever  before,  has  it  been  possible  to  see  a 
geological  agency  effect  in  a  few  months  a  change 
which  usually  requires  centuries." 


60 


THE  SALTON  SEA 


THE   SAVING  OF   THE  VALLEY 

When  the  Southern  Pacific  engineers  under- 
took to  avert  the  peril  that  menaced  the  Im- 
perial Valley  in  the  summer  of  1906,  they  found 
little  in  recorded  history  to  help  or  guide  them. 
Inundations,  of  course,  had  often  occurred  be- 
fore, on  the  Mississippi  River  and  its  tribu- 
taries, in  the  valley  of  "  China's  Sorrow,"  and 
in  many  other  parts  of  the  world;  but  these 
floods  were  merely  overflows  on  a  relatively 
flat  surface.  The  cosmical  plunge  of  a  great 
river  into  the  dried-up  basin  of  an  ancient  sea 
was  an  unprecedented  phenomenon,  and  one 
which  raised  engineering  problems  that  were 
wholly  new.  Nobody  had  ever  before  tried  to 
control  a  rush  of  360,000,0x50  cubic  feet  of 
water  per  hour,  down  a  four-hundred-foot 
slope  of  easily  eroded  silt,  into  a  basin  big 
enough  to  hold  Long  Island  Sound.  There 
was  nothing  in  the  past  experience  of  the  world 
that  could  suggest  a  practicable  method  of  deal- 
ing with  such  conditions.  Neither  was  much 
help  to  be  obtained  from  the  advice  of  hy- 
draulic experts.  Of  the  forty  or  fifty  eminent 
engineers  who  visited  the  Colorado  delta  in 
1905  and  1906,  hardly  any  two  agreed  upon  a 
definite  plan  of  defensive  work,  while  almost 

61 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

everyone  found  something  objectionable  in  the 
measures  suggested  by  others.  All  admitted, 
however,  that  "the  situation  was  a  desperate 
one;"  that  it  was  "without  engineering  paral- 
lel;" and  that  "there  seemed  to  be  only  a 
fighting  chance  of  controlling  the  river." 

Mr.  Harriman,  who  believed  and  who  once 
said  that "  nothing  is  impossible,"  never  doubted 
that  the  control  of  the  Colorado  River  was 
within  human  power  and  human  resources.  In 
building  the  Lucin  cut-off  across  the  Great 
Salt  Lake  of  Utah  he  had  successfully  carried 
through  one  "impossible"  enterprise,  and  he 
did  not  hesitate  to  undertake  another.  In- 
spired by  his  invincible  courage,  President 
Randolph  and  his  engineers  set  about  their 
herculean  task. 

In  preparing  for  a  fifth  attempt  to  bring  the 
Colorado  under  control,  they  determined  to 
modify  the  plan  of  operations  previously  fol- 
lowed by  substituting  rock  for  the  materials 
that  had  before  been  used  in  the  construction 
of  dams.  Practical  experience  had  shown  that 
piling,  brush,  sandbags  and  earth  could  not  be 
made  to  support  the  pressure  of  the  river  in 
full  flood,  while  a  series  of  rock-fill  barrier  dams, 
of  sufficient  width  and  height,  might  be  strong 
enough  to  stand  even  a  flood  discharge  of 
62 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

115,000  cubic  feet  of  water  per  second.  In 
making  this  change  of  plan,  Mr.  Randolph 
acted  on  his  own  judgment  and  in  direct  opposi- 
tion to  the  views  and  advice  of  experts  who  were 
acquainted  with  the  situation.  Almost  all  of  the 
engineers  who  had  visited  the  break,  including 
many  of  national  and  international  reputation, 
regarded  a  rock-fill  barrier  dam  as  wholly  un- 
worthy of  consideration,  for  at  least  two  reasons. 
First,  the  rock  would  probably  sink  into  the  soft 
silt  bottom,  and  keep  on  going  down  indefinitely. 
It  might  perhaps  be  supported  by  a  strong 
brush-mattress  foundation,  but  even  then,  the 
mattress  would  be  likely  to  break  under  the 
weight  of  the  load  and  thus  fail  to  answer  its 
purpose.  Second,  the  water  going  over  a  rock- 
fill  dam,  while  it  was  in  course  of  construction, 
would  almost  certainly  wash  away  some  one 
rock  at  the  top.  This,  by  increasing  the  over- 
flow at  that  point,  would  dislodge  more  rocks, 
and  finally  create  a  breach  that  could  not  be 
closed.  President  Randolph  who  had  used 
brush-mattresses  and  rock-fill  dams  on  the 
Tombigbee  River  in  Alabama  many  years 
before,  fully  considered  these  objections  but 
did  not  find  them  convincing  and  steadfastly 
adhered  to  his  own  plan. 
The  preparations  made  for  the  summer's 
63 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

work  were  far  more  thorough  and  comprehen- 
sive than  any  that  had  ever  been  made  before. 
Realizing  the  importance  of  adequate  trans- 
portation, President  Randolph  and  his  engineers 
immediately  began  the  construction  of  a  branch 
railroad  from  the  main  line  of  the  Southern 
Pacific  to  the  scene  of  operations  at  the  crevasse, 
with  ample  sidings  and  terminal  facilities  at  both 
ends.  Then  they  borrowed  from  the  Union 
Pacific  three  hundred  of  the  mammoth  side- 
dump  cars  known  as  " battleships/7  which  had 
been  used  in  the  construction  of  the  Lucin  cut- 
off, and  which  had  a  carrying  capacity  of  fifty  or 
sixty  tons  each.  The  California  Development 
Company  had  three  light-draught  steamers  and 
a  number  of  barges  that  could  be  used  on  the 
river,  and  the  Southern  Pacific  Company  fur- 
nished complete  work-trains,  from  time  to  time, 
until  a  maximum  of  ten  was  reached.  The  next 
requisite  was  material  for  levees  and  dams,  and 
this  they  secured  by  drawing  upon  all  the  rock 
quarries  within  a  radius  of  four  hundred  miles, 
and  by  opening  a  new  one,  with  a  face  of  six  hun- 
dred feet  and  a  height  of  forty  feet,  on  the  granite 
ledge  at  Andrade  near  the  concrete  head-gate. 
Clay  they  obtained  from  a  deposit  just  north  of 
the  Mexican  boundary,  and  gravel  they  hauled 
from  the  Southern  Pacific  Company's  "Mam- 
64 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

moth  Gravel  Pit/'  which  was  situated  on  the 
main  line  about  forty  miles  west  of  the  crevasse 
spur.  From  Los  Angeles  they  brought  uoo 
ninety-foot  piles,  19,000  feet  of  heavy  timbers 
for  railway  trestles,  and  forty  miles  of  steel 
cable  to  be  used  in  the  weaving  of  brush- 
mattresses.  The  Southern  Pacific  Company 
furnished  pile-drivers,  steam  shovels  for  the 
granite  quarry  and  gravel  pit,  several  carloads 
of  repair  parts,  and  a  large  quantity  of  stores 
and  materials  of  various  kinds.  It  also  de- 
tailed for  service  on  the  spur  railroad  and  at 
the  crevasse  as  many  engineers,  mechanics  and 
skilled  workmen  as  were  needed.  The  chief 
reason,  Mr.  Cory  says,  "for  having  the  railroad 
company  supply  so  great  a  quantity  of  labor, 
equipment  and  supplies,  was  that  it  afforded 
an  opportunity  to  assemble  quickly  a  thoroughly 
organized  and  efficient  force  of  men;  the  ad- 
vantage of  obtaining  material  and  supplies 
through  the  purchasing  department  of  the 
Harriman  systems;  immediate  shipment  of 
repair  parts  not  kept  on  hand;  and  the  ability 
to  increase  or  decrease  rapidly  the  force  and 
equipment  without  confusion." 

The  requisite  most  difficult  to  obtain,  in 
sufficient  amount,  was  unskilled  labor.  An 
attempt  was  made  to  get  five  hundred  peons 

65 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

from  central  Mexico;  but  it  did  not  succeed, 
and  Mr.  Cory  was  finally  compelled  to  mobilize 
all  the  Indian  tribes  in  that  part  of  the  South- 
west— Punas,  Papagoes,  Maricopas  and  Yumas 
from  Arizona  and  Cocopahs  and  Dieguefios 
from  Mexico.  These  Indians  fraternized  and 
got  along  together  amicably,  and  constituted 
with  their  families  a  separate  camp  of  about  two 
thousand  people.  The  rest  of  the  laborers  were 
Mexicans  from  the  vicinity,  and  drifting  ad- 
venturers from  all  parts  of  the  United  States 
who  were  attracted  to  the  place  by  the  novelty 
of  the  work  and  the  publicity  given  to  it  in  the 
newspapers.  Arrangements  were  made  with 
the  Mexican  authorities  to  put  the  whole  region 
under  martial  law  and  to  send  a  force  of  rurales 
with  a  military  commandant  to  police  the 
camps. 

Active  work  began  on  the  6th  of  August,  1906, 
when  the  summer  flood  had  fallen  enough  to  re- 
duce the  flow  through  the  crevasse  to  about 
24,000  cubic  feet  per  second.  By  that  time  the 
receding  water  had  left  exposed  extensive  sand- 
bars on  both  sides  of  the  river,  which  narrowed 
the  channel  to  600  or  700  feet,  and  President 
Randolph's  plan  was  to  dam  this  channel  suffi- 
ciently to  throw  all  or  most  of  the  water  through 
the  by-pass  and  the  Rockwood  head-gate,  and 

66 


Co/arado  ft/rer 
at 

L  ower  Mexican  Heeding 

June  6,  1906        y 


Rockwood  Gate 


v^ 

\ 

Excavation  for  canal  water  \\ 
not  shown.  %\ 


There  /s  a  dredger  cut 
connecfiry  ca/ia/  with 
new  cfianne/. 


H 


Situation  in  June,  1906  (whole  river  going  into  Salton  Sink) 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

then  permanently  to  close  the  break.  As  it  was 
deemed  essential  to  blanket  the  bed  of  the  river 
with  a  woven  brush-mattress,  to  prevent  bottom 
erosion  and  to  make  a  foundation  for  the  rock, 
two  shifts  of  men  were  set  at  this  work.  In 
twenty  days  and  nights,  they  constructed,  with 
baling-wire,  steel  cable  and  two  thousand  cords 
of  brush,  about  13,000  square  feet  of  mattress, 
which  was  enough  to  cover  the  bed  of  the  river 
from  shore  to  shore  with  a  double  thickness  of 
blanketing  about  one  hundred  feet  in  width. 
When  this  covering  had  been  completed  and 
sunk,  a  railway  trestle  ten  feet  wide  was  built 
across  the  crevasse,  and  on  the  i4th  of  Septem- 
ber work- trains  of  "battleships"  began  running 
across  it  and  dumping  rock  on  to  the  mattress  at 
the  bottom  of  the  stream.  Meanwhile,  the  by- 
pass to  the  Rockwood  head-gate  was  completed 
and  enlarged,  and  in  less  than  two  weeks  the 
dam  was  high  enough  to  close  the  crevasse  in 
part  and  thus  divert  water  through  the  by-pass 
and  gate.  On  the  loth  of  October,  nearly  13,000 
cubic  feet  of  water  per  second  was  passing 
through  the  gate,  while  only  one-tenth  of  that 
amount  was  flowing  over  the  dam.  The  gate, 
however,  under  the  pressure  to  which  it  was 
subjected,  both  by  the  water  and  by  great 
masses  of  accumulated  driftwood,  began  to  show 

68 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

signs  of  weakness,  and  at  two  o'clock  on  the 
following  day  two-thirds  of  it  gave  way,  went 
out,  and  floated  down  stream.  The  by-pass 
then  became  the  main  river,  while  the  top  of  the 
diversion  dam  was  left  practically  dry.  Thus 
ended,  in  almost  complete  failure,  the  fifth  at- 
tempt to  control  the  Colorado.  The  river  had 
been  barred  in  one  channel,  but  it  burst  through 
another,  carrying  with  it  a  2oo-foot  head-gate 
which  represented  four  months  of  labor  and  an 
expenditure  of  $122,000. 

Mr.  Harriman  and  the  Southern  Pacific  en- 
gineers were  disappointed  but  not  disheartened. 
The  steel-and-concrete  head-gate  at  Andrade 
had  been  ready  for  use  since  June,  and  powerful 
dredges  were  set  at  work  clearing  out  and  en- 
larging the  four  miles  of  silted-up  canal  south 
of  it,  so  that  water  might  be  furnished  to  the 
Imperial  Valley  by  that  route  while  another 
attempt  was  being  made  to  close  completely 
both  the  Rockwood  by-pass  and  the  original 
intake. 

An  inspection  of  the  rock-fill  dam,  which  had 
been  left  exposed  by  the  diversion  of  the  river, 
showed  that  the  objections  made  to  a  structure 
of  this  kind  were  not  well  founded.  The  brush- 
mattress  had  not  been  broken  by  the  weight  of 
the  rocks;  the  rocks  themselves  had  not  sunk 

69 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

out  of  sight  in  the  soft  silt  of  the  bottom,  and 
the  dam  had  not  been  breached  or  seriously 
injured.  It  leaked  a  little,  but  its  good  condi- 
tion in  other  respects  suggested  the  possibility 
of  quickly  closing  the  by-pass  and  the  intake 
with  rock  barriers  of  this  type.  Additional 
trestles  were  built  across  both  waterways;  ten 
trains  of  flat  cars  and  "battleships"  were  set 
at  work  bringing  rock  from  three  or  four  dif- 
ferent quarries,  and  the  laboring  force  was  in- 
creased to  about  a  thousand  men  with  seven 
hundred  horses  and  mules.  Operations  were 
pushed  night  and  day,  and  in  a  little  more  than 
three  weeks,  high  rock-fill  dams  were  built  across 
both  intake  and  by-pass,  and  were  connected 
by  massive  levees  so  as  to  make  a  continuous 
barrier  about  half  a  mile  in  length.  Leakage 
through  the  dams  was  stopped  by  facing  them 
with  gravel  and  clay,  forced  into  the  interstices 
and  puddled  with  streams  of  water  from  power- 
ful pumps,  and  the  levees  at  both  ends  were 
connected  with  those  that  had  previously  been 
built  up  and  down  the  river  by  the  California 
Development  Company.  In  the  course  of  the 
work  there  were  used,  first  and  last,  about  three 
thousand  carloads  of  rock,  gravel  and  clay, 
while  400,000  cubic  yards  of  earth  were  moved 
by  dredges  and  teams. 

70 


LOWER  COLORADO   RIVER 

AT 

LOWER  MEXICAN  HEADING 

NOV.  4  1906 

(Not  from  personal,  observation.  Sketch 
illustrates  position  of  dams) 


All  water  turned      j! 
doivn  proper  channel 
on  Nov.  4  1906 


First  Closure  of  Crevasse,  Nov.  4,  1906 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

On  the  4th  of  November,  a  little  more  than 
two  years  after  the  cutting  of  the  lower  Mexican 
intake,  the  crevasse  into  which  it  had  grown 
was  closed,  and  the  river  was  forced  back  into 
its  ancient  bed.  The  danger  had  apparently 
been  averted  and  the  Imperial  Valley  was  safe; 
but  where  a  treacherous  river  like  the  Colorado 
is  concerned,  danger  is  never  over  and  safety 
can  be  secured  only  by  incessant  watchfulness 
and  continual  labor.  On  the  yth  of  December, 
another  sudden  flood  came  down  the  Gila  and 
increased  the  discharge  of  the  Colorado  from 
9000* to  about  45,000  cubic  feet  per  second. 
The  rock-fill  dam  of  the  Southern  Pacific  en- 
gineers stood  fast;  but,  about  midnight,  a  recon- 
structed earthen  levee  of  the  California  Develop- 
ment Company,  twelve  or  fifteen  hundred  feet 
further  south,  was  undermined,  began  to  leak, 
and  finally  gave  way.  The  breach  at  first  was 
small;  but  it  was  so  rapidly  deepened  and  wid- 
ened by.  erosion  and  caving  that  it  soon  became 
a  crevasse,  and  in  less  than  three  days  the  whole 
river  was  pouring  through  a  break  a  thousand 
feet  wide  and  again  rushing  down  the  slope  of 
the  basin  to  the  Salton  Sea. 

This  new  crevasse,  taken  in  connection  with 
the  history  and  the  experience  of  the  two  pre- 
ceding years,  showed  conclusively:  i,  that  the 

72 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

tendency  of  the  Colorado  to  flow  into  the  Salton 
Sink  was  increasing  rather  than  diminishing; 
2,  that  floods  of  from  180,000,000  to  360,000,000 
cubic  feet  of  water  per  hour  were  liable  to  occur 
at  almost  any  season  of  the  year;  3,  that  the 
defensive  dikes  of  the  California  Development 
Company  were  everywhere  inadequate  or  un- 
trustworthy; and  4,  that  in  order  to  afford  cer- 
tain protection  to  the  Imperial  Valley,  it  would 
be  necessary  not  only  to  close  the  new  break, 
but  to  build  a  stronger,  higher  and  more  massive 
levee  along  the  west  bank  of  the  river  for  a 
distance  of  at  least  twenty  miles. 

These  considerations  raised  of  course  the 
question  whether  it  was  worth  while  for  the 
Southern  Pacific  Company  to  continue  this 
work,  upon  which  it  had  already  spent  about 
$1,500,000.  The  interests  chiefly  imperilled 
were  those  of  the  national  Government.  It 
owned  all  the  irrigable  land  along  the  lower 
Colorado,  including  even  that  upon  which  the 
Imperial  Valley  settlers  had  filed.1  It  was  then 
constructing  an  immense  dam  at  Potholes, 

1  The  settlers  had  made  desert  or  homestead  entries  on 
the  land,  were  actually  in  possession  of  it,  and  had  an 
equitable  right  to  it;  but  the  original  survey  of  this  part  of 
California  had  been  found  inaccurate  and  defective,  and 
the  Government  would  not — possibly  could  not — issue  pat- 
ents until  boundaries  had  been  more  clearly  denned  by  a 
re-survey.  The  settlers,  therefore,  could  not  raise  money 

73 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

twelve  miles  above  Yuma,  upon  which  it  had  al- 
ready expended  about  $1,000,000  (the  Laguna 
dam)  and  with  the  water  to  be  impounded 
thereby  it  expected  to  irrigate  and  reclaim  about 
90,000  acres  of  fertile  land  in  Arizona  and  South- 
ern California.  If  the  uncontrolled  river  should 
continue  to  "  cut  back,"  by  means  of  its  receding 
waterfalls,  it  not  only  would  destroy  the  Laguna 
dam,  and  the  irrigation  works  upon  which  the 
Imperial  Valley  depended  for  its  very  existence, 
but  would  eventually  turn  the  whole  bed  of  the 
lower  Colorado  into  a  gorge,  out  of  which  water 
for  irrigation  purposes  could  never  be  taken. 
This  would  make  valueless  more  than  two 
thousand  square  miles  of  potentially  fertile  land, 
which,  if  intensively  cultivated,  would  support 
a  quarter  of  a  million  people. 

The  interests  of  the  Southern  Pacific  Com- 
pany, on  the  other  hand,  were  comparatively 
unimportant.  The  traffic  of  the  Imperial 
Valley,  at  that  time,  amounted  to  perhaps 
$1,200,000  a  year,  from  which  the  railroad  de- 
rived a  revenue  of  only  $20,000  or  $30,000  for 
freight  transportation.1  This,  in  its  relation  to 

on  their  farms  by  mortgaging  them,  because  the  legal  title 
was  still  vested  in  the  Government.    This  became  a  very 
serious  matter  when  they  wished  to  help  the  Southern 
Pacific  in  its  fight  with  the  river. 
1  Maxwell  Evarts. 

74 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

the  whole  business  of  the  company,  was  so 
insignificant  as  hardly  to  be  worth  considera- 
tion. The  flooding  of  the  valley,  moreover, 
could  not  injure  the  road  much  more  than  it 
had  already  been  injured.  A  section  of  new 
line,  about  sixty  miles  in  length,  had  been  sur- 
veyed and  graded,  and  the  ties  and  rails  for  it 
were  on  the  ground.  At  an  additional  cost 
therefore  of  only  $50,000  or  $60,000,  the  im- 
perilled part  of  the  track  could  be  moved  to  a 
higher  location  where  the  rising  waters  of  the 
Sal  ton  Sea  could  not  reach  it. 

President  Randolph,  after  full  investigation 
reported  the  existing  state  of  affairs  J:o  Mr. 
Harriman  by  telegraph,  and  informed  him  that 
while  the  original  break  might  be  closed  at  a 
cost  of  from  $300,000  to  $350,000,  permanent 
control  of  the  river  would  require  about  twenty 
miles  of  muck-ditching  1  and  levee  reconstruc- 
tion, and  that  if  he  (Mr.  Harriman)  decided  to 
proceed  with  the  work,  he  might  have  to  spend 
$  i ,  500,000,  more.  In  view  of  this  possibility,  Mr. 
Randolph  suggested  that  the  Government,  or  the 
State  of  California,  be  called  upon  to  render  aid. 

1  Where  the  soil,  on  the  site  of  a  proposed  levee,  is  loose 
and  porous,  so  that  water  percolates  rapidly  through  it, 
a  "muck-ditch"  is  dug,  to  a  depth  of  six  or  eight  feet;  mate- 
rial of  more  solid  consistency  is  packed  into  it,  and  the  levee 
is  then  built  on  the  impervious  foundation. 

75 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

Mr.  Harriman,  who  had  implicit  confidence 
in  the  sound  business  judgment  as  well  as  the 
engineering  ability  of  Mr.  Epes  Randolph,  ac- 
cepted the  latter's  view  of  the  situation.  He 
did  not  doubt  that  the  Colorado  River  might 
ultimately  be  controlled;  but  as  the  expense 
would  be  very  great,  and  as  the  chief  interests 
imperilled  were  those  of  the  nation,  he  did  not 
think  that  the  Southern  Pacific  Company,  of 
which  he  was  President,  was  equitably  or  mor- 
ally bound  to  do  the  work  alone  and  at  its  own 
expense.  In  a  long  telegram  to  President  Roose- 
velt, dated  New  York  December  i3th,  he  fully 
set  forth  the  state  of  affairs,  but  did  not  com- 
ment upon  it  further  than  by  saying:  "In  view 
of  the  above,  it  does  not  seem  fair  that  we  should 
be  called  to  do  more  than  join  in  to  help  the 
settlers.'7 

The  following  telegraphic  correspondence 
then  ensued: 

Washington,  December  15,  1906. 
MR.  E.  H.  HARRIMAN, 
New  York. 

Referring  to  your  telegram  of  December  13, 
I  assume  you  are  planning  to  continue  work 
immediately  on  closing  break  in  Colorado  River. 
I  should  be  fully  informed  as  to  how  far  you 
intend  to  proceed  in  the  matter. 

THEODORE  ROOSEVELT. 
76 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

New  York,  December  19,  1906. 
THE  PRESIDENT, 
Washington. 

Further  referring  to  your  telegram  of  the 
1 5th  inst.  our  engineers  advise  that  closing  the 
break  and  restoring  the  levees  can  be  most 
quickly  and  cheaply  done,  if  the  work  is  under- 
taken immediately,  at  a  cost  of  $300,000  to 
$350,000.  The  Southern  Pacific  Company, 
having  been  at  an  expense  of  about  $2,000,000 
already,  does  not  feel  warranted  in  assuming 
this  responsibility  and  the  additional  expendi- 
ture which  is  likely  to  follow  to  make  the  work 
permanent,  besides  the  expenditure  which  the 
company  is  already  undergoing  to  put  its  tracks 
above  danger  line.  We  are  willing  to  cooperate 
with  the  Government,  contributing  train  serv- 
ice, use  of  tracks  and  switches,  use  of  rock 
quarries,  train  crews  etc.,  and  the  California 
Development  Company  will  contribute  its  en- 
gineers and  organization,  the  whole  work  to  be 
done  under  the  Reclamation  Service.  Can  you 
bring  this  about? 

E.  H.  HARRIMAN. 

Washington,  December  20,  1906. 
E.  H.  HARRIMAN, 

New  York. 

Replying  to  yours  of  igth,  Reclamation 
Service  cannot  enter  upon  work  without  author- 
ity of  Congress  and  suitable  convention  with 
Mexico.  Congress  adjourns  today  for  holidays. 
Impossible  to  secure  action  at  present.  It  is 

77 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

incumbent  upon  you  to  close  break  again. 
Question  of  future  permanent  maintenance  can 
then  be  taken  up.  Reclamation  engineers  avail- 
able for  consultation.  That  is  all  the  aid  that 
there  is  in  the  power  of  the  Government  to 
render,  and  it  seems  to  me  clear  that  it  is  the 
imperative  duty  of  the  California  Development 
Company  to  close  this  break  at  once. 

The  danger  is  ultimately  due  only  to  the 
action  of  that  company  in  the  past  in  making 
heading  completed  in  October,  1904,  in  Mexican 
territory.  The  present  crisis  can  at  this  moment 
only  be  met  by  the  action  of  the  company  which 
is  ultimately  responsible  for  it,  and  that  action 
should  be  taken  without  an  hour's  delay. 
Through  the  Department  of  State  I  am  en- 
deavoring to  secure  such  action  by  the  Mexican 
Government  as  will  enable  Congress  in  its  turn 
to  act.  But  at  present  Congress  can  do  nothing 
without  such  action  by  the  Mexican  Govern- 
ment. 

This  is  a  matter  of  such  vital  importance  that 
I  wish  to  repeat  that  there  is  not  the  slightest 
excuse  for  the  California  Development  Company 
waiting  an  hour  for  the  action  of  the  Govern- 
ment. It  is  its  duty  to  meet  the  present  danger 
immediately,  and  then  this  Government  will 
take  up  with  it,  as  it  has  already  taken  up  with 
Mexico,  the  question  of  providing  in  permanent 
shape  against  the  recurrence  of  the  danger. 
THEODORE  ROOSEVELT. 

Seldom,  if  ever  before,  in  our  country,  had 

78 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

material  and  financial  interests  of  such  tre- 
mendous importance  been  dependent  upon  the 
decision  of  a  single  man.  If  Mr.  Harriman 
should  order  a  continuance  of  the  work,  he 
would  put  at  hazard  a  million  and  a  half  dollars 
of  his  own  money,  or  the  money  of  the  Southern 
Pacific  stockholders,  in  addition  to  the  million 
and  a  half  or  two  millions  already  spent.  He 
would  have  to  do  this,  moreover,  mainly  for 
the  benefit  of  the  Imperial  Valley  and  the 
nation,  without  any  assurance  of  reimbursement 
or  compensation,  and  without  any  certainty  of 
success.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  should  de- 
cline to  sink  any  more  capital  in  the  effort  to 
retrieve  a  disaster  for  which  neither  he  nor  the 
Southern  Pacific  Company  was  in  the  slightest 
degree  responsible,  the  Laguna  dam  and  the  Im- 
perial Valley  would  both  be  destroyed;  twelve 
thousand  ruined  and  impoverished  people  would 
be  driven  out  into  the  desert,  and  1,600,000  acres 
of  Government  land  would  be  lost  to  the  nation 
forever. 

Mr.  Harriman,  at  that  time,  was  being  prose- 
cuted by  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission 
as  presumably  a  malefactor,  and  President 
Roosevelt,  only  a  few  weeks  before,  had  charac- 
terized him  as  an  "undesirable  citizen;"  but  in 
the  supreme  test  of  character  to  which  he  was 

79 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

subjected,  he  showed  magnanimity,  courage 
and  public  spirit.  On  the  same  day  that  he 
received  the  President's  telegram  of  Decem- 
ber 2oth,  he  replied  in  the  following  words: 

"You  seem  to  be  under  the  impression  that 
the  California  Development  Company  is  a 
Southern  Pacific  enterprise.  This  is  erroneous. 
It  had  nothing  to  do  with  its  work,  or  the  open- 
ing of  the  canal.  We  are  not  interested  in  its 
stock  and  in  no  way  control  it.  We  have  loaned 
it  some  money  to  assist  in  dealing  with  the 
situation.  What  the  Southern  Pacific  has  done 
was  for  the  protection  of  the  settlers  as  well 
as  of  its  own  tracks,  but  we  have  determined 
to  remove  the  tracks  onto  high  ground  anyway. 
However,  in  view  of  your  message,  I  am  giving 
authority  to  the  Southern  Pacific  officers  in  the 
West  to  proceed  at  once  with  efforts  to  repair 
the  break,  trusting  that  the  Government,  as 
soon  as  you  can  procure  the  necessary  Congres- 
sional action,  will  assist  us  with  the  burden." 

The  contention  of  the  Government  was  that 
inasmuch  as  the  Southern  Pacific  Company 
loaned  $200,000  to  the  California  Development 
Company  in  June,  1905,  and  assumed  temporary 
control  of  the  latter's  affairs  for  the  purpose  of 
safeguarding  its  loan,  the  lending  company 
thereby  made  itself  responsible  for  all  the  un- 
foreseen consequences  of  a  ditch  dug  by  the 

80 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

borrowing  company  almost  a  year  earlier.  This 
contention  will  not  bear  a  moment's  scrutiny. 
The  Southern  Pacific  Company  did  not,  at  any 
time,  own  any  of  the  Development  Company's 
stock.  The  shares  pledged  as  collateral  for  the 
loan  were  in  the  hands  of  a  trustee.  The  South- 
ern Pacific  Company  did  not  even  elect  the 
president  and  three  directors  of  the  Develop- 
ment Company.  They  were  elected  by  the 
latter's  stockholders  under  the  terms  of  the  loan 
agreement.1  The  Southern  Pacific  was  a  cred- 
itor of  the  Development  Company,  but  in  no 
sense  a  "successor  in  interest"  by  virtue  of 
ownership. 

The  lower  Mexican  intake,  which  admitted 
the  river  to  the  Valley  and  caused  the  disaster, 
was  dug  long  before  the  Southern  Pacific  Com- 
pany had  any  control  whatever  over  the  Devel- 
opment Company,  and  it  would  be  a  violation 
of  the  most  elementary  principles  of  equity  if  a 
lender  were  held  responsible  for  all  previous 
transactions  of  a  borrower,  merely  because  the 
latter  had  voluntarily  agreed  to  share  control 
of  his  business  in  order  to  obtain  the  loan.  If  a 
farmer  goes  to  a  bank,  gives  a  mortgage  on  his 

1  The  text  of  the  agreement  may  be  found  in  Report  1936, 
House  of  Representatives,  6ist  Congress,  3rd  Session, 
Jan.  18,  1911. 

81 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

farm  as  security  for  a  loan,  and  agrees  that  a 
representative  of  the  bank  shall  supervise  his 
agricultural  operations  until  the  loan  is  repaid, 
the  bank  does  not  become  responsible  for  a 
dam  across  a  stream  on  the  farmer's  property 
built  by  the  farmer  himself  a  year  before  he  had 
any  relations  with  the  bank.  The  bank  might 
be  responsible  for  a  dam  built  under  the  direc- 
tion of  its  representative,  but  not  for  a  dam 
built  by  the  farmer  a  year  before  such  represent- 
ative was  appointed. 

When  President  Roosevelt  received  Mr. 
Harriman's  telegram  of  December  2oth,  saying 
that  orders  had  been  given  to  proceed  with  the 
work,  he  replied  in  the  following  words: 

"Am  delighted  to  receive  your  telegram. 
Have  at  once  directed  the  Reclamation  Service 
to  get  into  touch  with  you,  so  that  as  soon  as 
Congress  reassembles  I  can  recommend  legis- 
lation which  will  provide  against  a  repetition 
of  the  disaster  and  make  provision  for  the 
equitable  distribution  of  the  burden." 

While  the  negotiations  between  President 
Roosevelt  and  Mr.  Harriman  were  in  progress, 
the  river-fighting  organization  on  the  lower 
Colorado  was  kept  intact.  The  rock  quarry  at 
Andrade  was  further  developed;  sidings  just 

82 


Lower  Colorado  Riser 
Break  in  Levee,  South  of  Dam 


This  sketch  maa/& 
Report  dated  De 
This  shows  condition 


Last  Break  in  Defences,  December  1906 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

across  the  Mexican  boundary  were  lengthened 
to  seven  thousand  feet,  and  material  and  equip- 
ment of  all  possible  kinds  which  might  be  needed 
were  gathered  and  held  in  readiness.  When, 
therefore,  on  the  2oth  of  December,  an  order 
was  received  from  Mr.  Harriman  to  go  ahead 
and  close  the  break,  President  Randolph,  backed 
by  all  the  resources  of  the  Southern  Pacific,  be- 
gan a  last  supreme  effort  to  control  the  river  and 
save  the  Imperial  Valley.  The  crevasse,  at  that 
time,  was  noo  feet  wide,  with  a  maximum 
depth  of  forty  feet,  and  the  whole  current 
of  the  Colorado  was  rushing  through  it  and 
discharging  into  the  basin  of  the  Sink  about 
160,000,000  cubic  feet  of  water  every  hour. 
There  was  not  time  enough  for  the  con- 
struction of  another  brush-mattress,  so  the 
Southern  Pacific  engineers  determined  to 
build  two  railway  trestles  of  ninety-foot  piles 
across  the  break,  and  then,  with  a  thousand  flat 
cars  and  "battleships/7  bring  rocks  and  dump 
them  into  the  river  faster  than  they  could 
possibly  be  swallowed  up  by  the  silt  or  carried 
down  stream.  Three  times,  within  a  month, 
the  ninety-foot  piles  were  ripped  out  and  swept 
away  and  the  trestles  partly  or  wholly  de- 
stroyed; but  the  pile-drivers  kept  at  work,  and 
on  the  27th  of  January  the  first  trestle  was 

84 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

finished  for  the  fourth  time  and  the  dumping 
of  rock  from  it  began. 

Mr.  F.  H.  Newell,  Director  of  the  U.  S. 
Reclamation  Service,  in  a  description  of  the 
final  closure  of  the  crevasse,  says: 

"The  stones  used  were  as  large  as  could  be 
handled  or  pushed  from  the  flat  cars  by  a  gang 
of  men,  or  by  as  many  men  as  could  get  around 
a  stone.  In  some  cases  the  pieces  were  so  large 
that  it  was  necessary  to  break  them  by  what 
are  called  'pop-shots'  of  dynamite  laid  upon 
the  stone  while  it  rested  on  the  cars.  In  this 
way  the  stones  were  broken  and  then  could  be 
readily  thrown  overboard  by  hand.  •  The  scene 
at  the  closure  of  the  break  was  exciting.  Train 
after  train  with  heavy  locomotives  came  to  the 
place  and  the  stones,  large  and  small,  were 
pushed  off  by  hundreds  of  workmen  as  rapidly 
as  the  cars  could  be  placed.  While  waiting  to 
get  out  upon  the  trestle  the  larger  stones  were 
broken  by  '  pop-shots,'  and  the  noise  sounded 
like  artillery  in  action.  Added  to  the  roar  of 
the  waters  were  the  whistle  signals,  the  orders 
to  the  men,  and  the  bustle  of  an  army  working 
day  and  night  to  keep  ahead  of  the  rapid  cutting 
of  the  stream. 

"As  the  rock  heap  rose  gradually,  it  checked 
the  river,  causing  it  also  to  rise  higher  and 

85 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

higher  and  to  cascade  over  the  pile  of  stone. 
Riffles  were  caused,  and  an  undercutting  of  the 
lower  slope  of  the  rock  heap  allowed  it  to  settle 
and  the  stones  to  roll  down  stream.  All  of  this 
undercutting  and  settling  had  to  be  made  up 
and  overcome  by  the  rapid  dumping  of  other 
large  stones." 

"It  was  necessary  to  raise  the  river  bodily 
about  eleven  feet.  As  the  water  rose  and  be- 
came ponded  on  the  upper  side  of  the  rock 
heap,  train  load  after  train  load  of  small  stone 
and  gravel  from  the  nearby  hills  was  dumped 
to  fill  the  spaces  between  the  large  rocks. 
Finally,  after  days  and  nights  of  struggle,  the 
water  was  raised  to  a  point  where  it  began  to 
flow  down  its  former  channel  and  less  and  less 
to  pass  over  the  rock  heap.  Then  finer  material 
was  added  and  rapidly  piled  up  on  the  accumu- 
lated rock  mass.  At  first,  a  large  amount  of 
water  passed  through,  and  steps  were  taken 
as  rapidly  as  possible  to  close  the  openings  by 
dumping  sand  and  gravel,  finishing  this  work 
by  hydraulicking  silt  or  mud  over  the  area  and 
washing  this  in  with  a  hose.  By  thus  piling  up 
finer  and  finer  material  and  distributing  it,  the 
seepage  or  percolation  through  the  mass  was 
quickly  checked  and  the  barrier  became  ef- 
fective." ("The  Salton  Sea,"  by  F.  H.  Newell, 

86 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

Director  of  the  U.  S.  Reclamation  Service; 
Annual  Report  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution 
for  1907,  p.  331.) 

The  crevasse  was  closed  and  the  river  forced 
into  its  old  bed  on  the  loth  of  February  1907, 
fifty  two  days  after  President  Roosevelt  ap- 
pealed to  Mr.  Harriman,  and  fifteen  days  after 
the  first  "battleship'7  load  of  rock  was  dumped 
from  the  first  completed  trestle.  In  order, 
however,  that  this  gigantic  work  might  be  ac- 
complished, the  transportation  of  commercial 
freight  on  the  western  part  of  the  trans- 
continental railroad  had  to  be  temporarily 
abandoned.  In  testifying  before  a  House 
committee,  about  a  year  later,  Chief  Engineer 
Cory  said: 

"For  three  weeks,  two  divisions  of  the  South- 
ern Pacific  system,  embracing  about  twelve 
hundred  miles  of  main  line,  were  practically 
tied  up  because  of  our  demands  for  equipment 
and  facilities.  We  had  a  thousand  flat  cars 
exclusively  in  our  service,  and  shipping  from 
Los  Angeles'  seaport — San  Pedro — was  prac- 
tically abandoned  for  two  weeks  until  we  re- 
turned a  considerable  portion  of  the  equipment. 
It  was  simply  a  case  of  putting  rock  into  that 
break  faster  than  the  river  could  take  it 
away.  ...  In  fifteen  days  after  we  got  the 

87 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

trestle  across  and  dumped  the  first  carload  of 
rock  we  had  the  river  stopped.  In  that  time 
I  suppose  we  handled  rock  faster  than  it  was 
ever  handled  before.  .  .  .  We  hauled  it  from 
Patagonia,  Arizona,  four  hundred  and  eighty 
five  miles,  over  two  mountain  passes;  from 
Tacna,  sixty  miles  to  the  east;  from  three  other 
quarries — one  on  the  Santa  Fe,  one  on  the  Salt 
Lake  road,  and  one  on  the  Southern  Pacific- 
all  near  Colton,  two  hundred  miles  to  the  west, 
and  over  the  San  Gorgonio  Pass.  .  .  .  We 
brought  in  about  three  thousand  flat  cars 
loaded  with  rock  from  these  immense  distances, 
and  we  put  in,  all  together,  about  80,000  cubic 
yards  of  rock  in  fifteen  days." 

But  the  work  of  the  Southern  Pacific  en- 
gineers was  not  confined  solely  to  the  closing 
of  the  crevasse.  In  order  to  prevent  a  future 
break  in  some  other  part  of  the  irrigation  com- 
pany's defensive  system,  they  were  compelled 
to  extend  their  branch  railway,  and  to  build  or 
reinforce  levees  all  up  and  down  the  river.  De- 
scribing this  work  soon  after  its  completion  in 
1907,  the  Director  of  the  U.  S.  Reclamation 
Service  said: 

"There  now  extends  from  the  head  works  in 
the  United  States  along  the  river,  between  it 
and  the  canal,  a  double  row  of  dikes,  the  outer 

88 


Hind-Clarke  Dam  by  which  Crevasse  was  Finally  Closed  in  January  1907 


Railroad  Track  on  Reconstructed  Levee 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

one  being  occupied  by  a  railroad.  These  extend 
in  an  unbroken  line  for  a  dozen  miles  near  the 
river  and  shut  it  off  from  the  lowlands  to  the 
west.  The  river  side  of  this  dike  is  protected 
by  a  thick  layer  of  gravel,  and  the  railroad 
affords  immediate  access  to  all  parts,  so  that 
if  menaced  by  the  cutting  of  the  banks  it  will 
be  possible  to  bring  men  and  materials  to  check 
the  floods  from  encroachment  upon  the  dike 
itself.  Secondary  dikes  or  cross  levees  run  from 
the  main  structure  to  certain  subsidiary  works, 
so  that  if  the  outer  main  dike  is  broken  or  water 
flows  through,  this  will  be  ponded,  for  a  while 
at  least,  against  the  inner  line  of  defense,  thus 
affording  time  to  assemble  the  necessary  equip- 
ment to  fight  another  intrusion." 

In  closing  the  second  crevasse  and  completing 
the  so-called  "Hind- Clarke  dam1  there  were 
used  1200  ninety-foot  piles;  16,000  feet  of  eight- 
by-seven  teen-inch  pine  stringers,  and  5765  car- 
loads of  rock,  gravel  and  clay.  In  reconstruct- 
ing and  extending  the  levee  system  nearly 
900,000  cubic  yards  of  earth  were  excavated  or 
placed  in  embankments,  while  5285  carloads  of 

1  The  northern  part  of  this  dam,  across  the  by-pass  and 
intake,  was  built  under  the  immediate  supervision  of  Super- 
intendent Thomas  J.  Hind,  and  the  southern  part,  across  the 
second  crevasse,  under  that  of  Superintendent  C.  K.  Clarke. 
Both  were  Southern  Pacific  engineers. 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

gravel  for  blanketing  were  brought  from  the 
Mammoth  Gravel  Pit,  forty  miles  west  of  the 
river  on  the  main  line.  The  total  cost  of  the 
defensive  work  done  after  President  Roosevelt 
made  his  appeal  to  Mr.  Harriman  was  about 
$1,600,000,  and  this  added  to  the  cost  of  pre- 
vious operations  made  a  total  of  approximately 
$3,100,000  expended  in  the  effort  to  control  the 
Colorado  and  keep  it  out  of  the  Imperial  Valley. 
But  the  work  was  thoroughly  and  effectively 
done.  The  river  has  never  broken  through  the 
Southern  Pacific  defences,  although  since  the 
final  closing  of  the  second  crevasse  in  1907 
there  have  been  two  floods  in  which  the  dis- 
charge of  water  has  exceeded  140,000  cubic  feet 
per  second,  or  twelve  billion  cubic  feet  every 
twenty  four  hours. 

The  great  service  thus  rendered  by  Mr. 
Harriman  to  the  people  of  the  Imperial  Valley 
and  to  the  nation  has  never  been  set  forth  more 
clearly,  perhaps,  than  it  was  in  the  message 
sent  by  President  Roosevelt  to  the  Congress 
on  the  1 2th  of  January  1907,  while  the  work  of 
closing  the  second  crevasse  was  in  progress. 
In  that  historic  paper  he  said: 

"The  governor  of  the  State  of  California  and 
individuals  and  communities  in  southern  Cali- 
fornia have  made  urgent  appeals  to  me  to  take 

90 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

steps  to  save  the  lands  and  settlements  in  the 
sink,  or  depression,  known  as  the  Imperial 
Valley,  or  Salton  Sink  region,  from  threatened 
destruction  by  the  overflow  of  Colorado  River. 
The  situation  appears  so  serious  and  urgent 
that  I  now  refer  the  matter  to  the  Congress 
for  its  consideration.  .  .  < 

"By  means  of  the  facilities  available  to  the 
Southern  Pacific  Company,  the  break  in  the 
west  bank  of  the  Colorado  River  was  closed  on 
November  4,  1906.  A  month  later,  however, 
a  sudden  rise  in  the  river  undermined  the  poorly 
constructed  levees  immediately  south  of  the 
former  break,  and  the  water  again  resumed  its 
course  into  the  Salton  Sea. 

"The  results  have  been  highly  alarming,  as 
it  appears  that  if  the  water  is  not  checked  it 
will  cut  a  very  deep  channel  which,  progressing 
upstream  in  a  series  of  cataracts,  will  result  in 
conditions  such  that  the  water  cannot  be  di- 
verted by  gravity  into  the  canals  already  built 
in  the  Imperial  Valley.  If  the  break  is  not 
closed  before  the  coming  spring  flood  of  1907, 
it  appears  highly  probable  that  all  of  the  prop- 
erty values  created  in  this  valley  will  be  wiped 
out,  including  farms  and  towns,  as  well  as  the 
revenues  derived  by  the  Southern  Pacific  Com- 
pany. Ultimately  the  channel  will  be  deepened 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

in  the  main  stream  itself,  up  to  and  beyond 
the  town  of  Yuma,  destroying  the  homes  and 
farms  there,  the  great  railroad  bridge,  and  the 
Government  works  at  Laguna  dam  above 
Yuma.  .  .  . 

"If  the  river  is  not  put  back  and  permanently 
maintained  in  its  natural  bed,  the  progressive 
back-cutting,  in  the  course  of  one  or  two  years, 
will  extend  upstream  to  Yuma,  as  before  stated, 
and  finally  to  the  Laguna  dam,  now  being  built 
by  the  Government,  thus  wiping  out  millions 
of  dollars  of  property  belonging  to  the  Govern- 
ment and  to  citizens.  Continuing  farther,  it 
will  deprive  all  the  valley  lands  along  the 
Colorado  River  of  the  possibility  of  obtaining 
necessary  supply  of  water  by  gravity  canals. 

"The  great  Yuma  bridge  will  go  out,  and  ap- 
proximately 700,000  acres  of  land  as  fertile  as 
the  Nile  Valley  will  be  left  in  a  desert  condition. 
What  this  means  may  be  understood  when  we 
remember  that  the  entire  producing  area  of 
southern  California  is  about  250,000  acres.  A 
most  conservative  estimate  after  full  develop- 
ment must  place  the  gross  product  from  this 
land  at  not  less  than  $100  per  acre  per  year, 
every  ten  acres  of  which  will  support  a  family 
when  under  intense  cultivation.  If  the  break 
in  the  Colorado  is  not  permanently  controlled, 

92 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

Jihe  financial  loss  to  the  United  States  will  be 
great.  The  entire  irrigable  area  which  will  be 
either  submerged  or  deprived  of  water,  in  the 
Imperial  Valley  and  along  the  Colorado  River, 
is  capable  of  adding  to  the  permanent  popula- 
tion of  Arizona  and  California  at  least  350,000 
people,  and  probably  500,000.  Much  of  the  land 
will  be  worth  from  $500  to  $1500  per  acre  to  in- 
dividual owners,  or  a  total  of  from  $350,000,000 
to  $700,000,000.  .  .  . 

"The  point  to  be  especially  emphasized  is 
that  prompt  action  must  be  taken,  if  any;  other- 
wise the  conditions  may  become  so  extreme  as 
to  be  impracticable  of  remedy.  ...  It  is 
probable  now  that  with  an  expenditure  of 
$2,000,000  the  river  can  be  restored  to  its  former 
channel  and  held  there  indefinitely;  but  if  this 
action  is  not  taken  immediately,  several  times 
this  sum  may  be  required  to  restore  it,  and  pos- 
sibly it  cannot  be  restored  unless  enormous  sums 
are  expended."  (House  Report  No.  1936,  6ist 
Congress,  3rd  Session,  pp.  153-157.) 

THE  RECOMPENSE 

One  might  naturally  suppose  that  when  a 
private  citizen,  at  the  head  of  a  great  railroad 
company,  averted  a  national  calamity,  and 

93 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

saved  for  the  country  public  property  that  was 
actually  worth  $25,000,000  and  that  had  a 
potential  value  of  "from  $350,000,000  to 
$700,000,000,"  he  would  be  entitled,  at  least, 
to  the  thanks  of  the  national  legislature.  If, 
even  in  Russia,  a  railroad  president,  at  the 
request  of  the  Czar,  controlled  a  great  flood  in 
the  Volga,  barred  that  river  out  of  the  city  of 
Astrakhan,  and  saved  from  total  destruction 
"  700,000  acres  "  of  fertile  land  potentially  worth 
"from  $350,000,000  to  $700,000,000,"  he  would 
certainly  receive  the  thanks  of  the  nation,  ex- 
pressed in  a  suitably  worded'  resolution  of  the 
Duma  and  the  Council  of  the  Empire.  It  is 
more  than  probable  that,  even  in  China,  some- 
thing of  this  kind  would  have  been  done  for  a 
railroad  president  who  had  controlled  a  disas- 
trous flood  in  the  valley  of  the  Hoang-ho.  But 
no  such  acknowledgment  of  valuable  service 
was  ever  made  by  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States. 

Perhaps,  however,  Mr.  Harriman  was  not 
entitled  to  credit,  for  the  reason  that  the  work 
in  the  field  was  done  by  the  Southern  Pacific 
Company  and  its  engineers.  This  was  not  the 
view  taken  by  the  company  and  the  engineers 
themselves.  If  Mr.  Harriman,  personally,  had 
been  asked  who  finally  controlled  the  Colorado 

94 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

River  and  saved  the  Imperial  Valley,  he  un- 
doubtedly would  have  replied:  "Epes  Ran- 
dolph, H.  T.  Cory,  Thomas  J.  Hind,  C.  K. 
Clarke,  and  their  associates."  But  these  gentle- 
men have  publicly  said  that  the  driving  power 
behind  their  work — the  one  thing  that  made  it 
successful — was  the  invincible  determination  of 
their  chief.  In  a  written  discussion  of  the  op- 
erations on  the  lower  Colorado,  which  was  con- 
ducted by  the  American  Society  of  Civil  En- 
gineers, Mr.  C.  K.  Clarke  said: 

"The  writer  desires  to  put  on  record  the  fact 
that  the  accomplishment  of  the  work  was  due 
primarily  and  exclusively  to  the  independent 
judgment  and  courage  of  Mr.  Harriman,  who 
persisted  in  his  belief  that  the  breaks  could  be 
closed,  and  his  determination  to  close  them,  in 
the  face  of  opposition,  and  regardless  of  the 
positive  assertions  of  a  host  of  eminent  engineers 
that  the  closure  was  a  physical  impossibility." 
(Transactions  of  the  American  Society  of  Civil 
Engineers,  Paper  1270,  pp.  1551-2.) 

In  the  course  of  the  same  discussion,  Mr. 
Elwood  Mead,  Chief  of  the  Irrigation  and 
Drainage  Division  of  the  U.  S.  Department  of 
Agriculture,  said: 

"It  was  the  duty  of  the  State  or  Nation  to 
take  charge,  and  provide  the  money  and  men 

95 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

needed  to  restore  the  river  to  its  former  channel. 
Apparently  no  one  in  authority  was  interested; 
the  State  Government  only  considered  the 
matter  long  enough  to  write  a  letter  to  the 
President,  and  the  President,  having  Congress 
on  his  hands,  shifted  the  responsibility  to  the 
head  of  a  railroad  company;  and  it  was  not 
until  the  railroad  company  took  charge  that 
we  have  the  first  refreshing  example  of  generos- 
ity and  public  spirit.  Nothing  could  have  been 
finer  than  the  action  of  Mr.  Harriman.  The 
loan  of  $250,000,  when  his  time  and  resources 
were  overtaxed  by  the  earthquake  at  San  Fran- 
cisco, and  the  providing  more  than  $1,000,000 
for  the  last  hazardous  attempt  to  save  the  val- 
ley, furnish  an  inspiring  contrast  to  the  supine 
indifference  and  irresponsibility  shown  by  both 
the  State  and  Federal  authorities."  (Same 
Paper,  p.  1510.) 

Mr.  Epes  Randolph,  who  as  President  of  the 
California  Development  Company  directed  and 
controlled  the  engineering  operations  in  the 
lower  Colorado  from  1905  to  1907,  said,  in  a 
private  letter  to  a  student  of  the  subject: 

"It  was  a  great  work,  and  I  do  not  believe 
that  any  man  whom  I  have  ever  known,  except 
Mr.  Harriman,  would  have  undertaken  it.  All 
of  those  of  us  who  actually  handled  the  work 

96 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

were  merely  instruments  in  the  hands  of  the 
Master  Builder." 

From  these  expressions  of  opinion  it  clearly 
appears  that,  in  the  judgment  of  the  men  "on 
the  firing  line/'  the  fight  with  the  Colorado 
was  inspired,  directed  and  won  by  E.  H.  Harri- 
man;  but  no  acknowiedgment  of  indebtedness 
to  him  personally  was  ever  made  by  the  Con- 
gress of  the  United  States.  The  service  that  he 
personally  rendered  was  recognized  and  publicly 
acknowledged  only  by  the  people  of  the  Imperial 
Valley.  In  testifying  before  the  House  Claims 
Committee,  in  March  1910,  Mr.  J.  B.  Parazette, 
speaking  for  the  farmers  of  the  Valley,  said : 

"  We  do  feel  rather  differently  in  that  Valley 
toward  Mr.  Harriman  from  the  way  others  seem 
to  feel  elsewhere  over  the  United  States.  We 
believe  that  Mr.  Harriman  felt  a  very  human 
interest  in  our  troubles  there.  .  .  .  We  volun- 
teered to  furnish  about  five  hundred  horses,  and 
to  bed  and  board  them,  and  to  furnish  men  to 
work  during  the  time  that  the  break  was  being 
closed;  but  we  heard  that  Mr.  Harriman  said 
that  the  farmers  down  there,  he  supposed,  had 
a  great  deal  to  do  (it  was  seeding  time  with 
them)  and  they  had  about  all  the  work  to  attend 
to  that  they  could  handle,  and  the  Southern 
Pacific  would  fix  the  break  anyway.  What  we 

97 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

could  have  done  would  not  have  amounted  to 
much  to  the  railroad  company,  but  it  would 
have  amounted  to  considerable  to  the  farmers 
there,  taking  their  teams  out  at  that  time  of 
the  year  when  they  wanted  to  put  in  crops." 

This  expression  of  gratitude  to  Mr..Harriman 
for  "showing  a  human  interest"  in  the  farmers' 
"troubles,"  and  for  declining  to  increase  their 
hardships  by  shifting  a  part  of  the  burden  of 
work  from  his  own  shoulders  to  theirs,  must 
have  pleased  him  more  than  any  formal  vote 
of  thanks  from  Congress  could  have  done. 

When  Mr.  Harriman,  on  the  2oth  of  Decem- 
ber 1906,  telegraphed  the  President  that,  "in 
view  of"  his  "message,"  he  would  resume  ef- 
forts to  control  the  Colorado,  he  ventured  to 
express  the  modest  hope  that  the  Government, 
as  soon  as  the  necessary  Congressional  action 
could  be  secured,  would  "assist  with  the  bur- 
den." Mr.  Roosevelt  replied  that  he  would 
recommend  legislation  to  "provide  against  a 
repetition  of  the  disaster  and  make  provision 
for  an  equitable  distribution  of  the  burden." 
(House  Report  No.  1936,  6ist  Congress,  3rd 
Session,  p.  163).  Three  weeks  later,  however, 
when  the  work  was  actually  in  progress,  he 
merely  said,  in  his  message  to  Congress,  that 
"the  question  as  to  what  sum,  if  any,  should 

98 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

be  paid  to  the  Southern  Pacific  Company  for 
work  done  since  the  break  of  November  4th, 
1906,  is  one  for  future  consideration.  For  work 
done  prior  to  that  date  no  claim  can  be  ad- 
mitted" (Same  Report,  p.  157).  This  may  have 
seemed  to  Mr.  Roosevelt  a  proper  recommenda- 
tion, and  one  likely  to  secure  "an  equitable 
distribution  of  the  burden;"  but  it  would  not 
have  made  that  impression  upon  an  irrigation 
expert,  say,  from  the  planet  Mars,  because  it 
suggested  a  doubt  whether  "any"  of  the  burden 
should  be  borne  by  the  chief  beneficiary,  namely 
the  Government.  However,  when  a  bill  to 
reimburse  the  Southern  Pacific  Company  was 
introduced  in  the  House  of  Representatives  in 
1908,  the  President  did  give  it  cordial  support 
by  saying,  in  a  letter  to  the  chairman  of  the 
Claims  Committee: 

".  .  .  I  accordingly  wrote  an  earnest  appeal 
to  the  officials  of  the  road"  (the  Southern 
Pacific)  "asking  them  to  act.  They  did  act, 
and  thereby  saved  from  ruin  many  people  in 
southern  California,  and  saved  to  the  Govern- 
ment the  Laguna  dam.  ...  I  feel  that  it  is 
an  act  of  justice  to  act  generously  in  this  matter, 
for  the  railroad,  by  the  prompt  and  effective 
work  that  it  did,  rendered  a  notable  service  to 
the  threatened  community.  In  no  other  way 
could  this  result  have  been  accomplished." 

99 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

(House  Report  No.  1936,  6ist  Congress,  3rd 
Session.) 

Mr.  Roosevelt's  "earnest  appeal"  had  been 
addressed,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  to  E.  H.  Harri- 
man,  not  to  "the  officials  of  the  road;"  but  the 
President,  apparently,  could  not  bring  himself, 
either  in  this  letter  or  in  his  previous  message, 
to  mention  the  name  of  the  man  who,  at  the 
very  time  when  he  was  struggling  with  the 
Colorado  River  at  the  request  of  the  Govern- 
ment, was  being  prosecuted  by  that  same  Gov- 
ernment as  a  malefactor.  Names  are  often 
embarrassing,  and  the  name  in  this  case  might 
have  suggested  to  the  public  mind  the  obnoxious 
idea  that  Mr.  Harriman,  after  all,  might  not 
be  a  wholly  "undesirable  citizen."  Then,  too, 
there  would  have  been  a  certain  incongruity  in 
denouncing  "Harriman,"  by  name  as  a  public 
enemy,  while  asking  the  same  "Harriman,"  by 
name,  to  render  a  great  public  service;  so  it  was 
apparently  thought  safer  to  mention  the  name 
in  one  case  and  drop  it  out  of  sight  in  the  other. 

The  President's  appeal  to  Congress  to  "act 
generously,"  was  not  so  successful  as  had  been 
his  appeal  to  Mr.  Harriman  to  stop  the  Colorado 
River  and  save  the  Imperial  Valley.  Congress 
seldom  acts  "generously"  except  on  measures 
likely  to  influence  votes,  such  as  pension  bills, 

100 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

public  building  bills,  and  bills  for  the  improve- 
ment of  rivers  and  harbors.  Mr.  Harriman  and 
the  Southern  Pacific  Company  had  "improved" 
a  national  river,  at  a  cost  to  themselves  of  about 
$3,000,000;  but  inasmuch  as  they  were  then 
under  a  cloud  of  unpopularity  created  by  official 
and  unofficial  misrepresentation,  their  influence 
on  Congressional  elections  was  negligible,  and 
Senators  and  Representatives  might  safely— 
perhaps  judiciously — ignore  their  claim  regard- 
less of  its  merits.  The  reimbursement  bill, 
therefore,  dragged  along  without  action  for 
about  three  years.  Hearings  were  held,  wit- 
nesses from  California  and  Arizona  were  exam- 
ined, expert  engineers  were  consulted,  and  the 
whole  subject  was  thoroughly  threshed  out. 
Memorials  in  support  of  the  bill  were  received 
from  towns,  communities  and  chambers  of 
commerce  in  the  Imperial  Valley;  and  the  entire 
Congressional  delegation  from  California,  as 
well  as  almost  all  the  newspapers  of  the  State, 
urged  reimbursement  as  a  matter  of  simple 
justice.  But  Congress  could  not  make  up  its 
mind  to  do  justice,  either  to  Mr.  Harriman  or 
to  a  railroad  company.  In  1909,  when  William 
H.  Taft  became  President,  he  at  once  took  up 
the  matter,  and  in  his  first  message  to  Congress 
referred  to  it  in  the  following  words : 

101 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

"This  leads  me  to  invite  the  attention  of 
Congress  to  the  claim  made  by  the  Southern 
Pacific  Company  for  an  amount  expended  in  a 
similar  work  of  relief  called  for  by  a  flood  and 
great  emergency.  This  work,  as  I  am  informed, 
was  undertaken  at  the  request  of  my  prede- 
cessor, and  under  promise  to  reimburse  the 
railroad  company.  It  seems  to  me  the  equity 
of  this  claim  is  manifest,  and  the  only  question 
involved  is  the  reasonable  value  of  the  work 
done.  I  recommend  the  payment  of  the  claim, 
in  a  sum  found  to  be  just."  (House  Report 
No.  1956,  6ist  Congress,  3rd  Session.) 

Two  years  later,  when  nothing  had  been 
done,  President  Taft  sent  to  the  Chairman  of 
the  House  Committee  on  Claims  the  following 
letter: 

White  House 

Washington,  Jan.  16,  1911. 
HON.  GEORGE  W.  PRINCE, 

Chairman  of  Committee  on  Claims, 
My  dear  Mr.  Prince: 

As  I  recommended  in  my  message,  I  sincerely 
hope  that  Congress,  at  this  time,  will  compen- 
sate the  Southern  Pacific  Railway  for  work 
which  it  did  in  the  Imperial  Valley  under  stress 
of  great  emergency.  I  do  not  know  what 
amount  is  just,  but  I  do  know  that  that  com- 
pany came  to  the  rescue  of  the  Government  at 
the  instance  of  President  Roosevelt,  and  that 
there  was  an  implied  arrangement  under  which 

IO2 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

they  were  to  be  compensated,  and  I  think  that 
Congress  should  take  up  the  matter  and  do 
justice  to  that  corporation  in  this  instance. 

Sincerely  yours, 
W.  H.  TAFT. 

Under  this  pressure  from  the  White  House, 
the  Committee  on  Claims  finally  acted.  On 
the  28th  of  January  1911,  after  having  reduced 
the  proposed  appropriation  from  $1,663,000  to 
$773,000,  the  committee,  by  a  divided  vote, 
reported  the  bill  to  the  House  with  the  recom- 
mendation that  it  pass.  Five  members,  how- 
ever, namely  Representatives  Goldfogle,  Kit- 
chin,  Candler,  Shackleford  and  Adair,  presented 
a  minority  report  in  which  they  described  the 
bill  as  aan  attempted  raid  on  the  Federal 
Treasury;"  denied  that  there  was  "any  legal, 
equitable,  or  moral  obligation  on  the  part  of 
the  Government"  to  pay  this  sum,  "or  any 
amount,  for  closing  the  break  in  the  Colorado 
River;"  referred  to  the  proposed  appropriation 
as  "purely  a  gratuity,"  "a  gift  of  the  people's 
money,"  and  declared  that  they  were  opposed 
to  this  "gift  to  the  Southern  Pacific  Company, 
as  well  as  all  other  gratuities  to  private  enter- 
prise." (House  Report  No.  1936,  part  2;  6ist 
Congress,  3rd  Session.) 

This  minority  report  seems  to  have  given 
103 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

the  coup  de  grace  to  the  reimbursement  bill. 
Whether  the  members  of  the  House  were  lack- 
ing in  a  sense  of  justice;  whether  they  were 
indifferent  to  the  bill  because  there  was  "noth- 
ing in  it  for  them; "  or  whether  they  were  afraid, 
in  an  election  campaign,  to  face  the  charge  that 
they  had  "given  the  people's  money,"  as  "a 
pure  gratuity"  to  one  of  Mr.  Harriman's  rail- 
road corporations,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  Cer- 
tain it  is  that  no  action  was  ever  taken  on  the 
bill,  although  it  had  been  favorably  reported 
by  the  Committee  on  Claims;  had  been  re- 
peatedly recommended  by  two  Presidents,  and 
had  been  unanimously  supported,  regardless  of 
party  lines,  by  the  people  of  the  Imperial  Valley 
and  by  the  whole  State  of  California.  There 
are  certain  events  which  may  seem  inexplicable, 
but  upon  which  it  is  not  necessary  to  comment. 
The  barest  recital  of  facts  is  eloquent  enough. 

Shortly  before  his  death,  Mr.  Harriman 
made  a  trip  through  the  Imperial  Valley  and 
over  the  reconstructed  levee  which  kept  the 
Colorado  River  within  bounds.  Upon  his  re- 
turn to  Imperial  Junction,  he  was  met  by  a 
representative  of  the  Los  Angeles  Examiner 
who,  in  conversation  about  the  work,  said: 

"Mr.  Harriman,  the  Government  hasn't  paid 
you  that  money,  and  your  work  here  does  not 
104 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

seem  to  be  duly  appreciated;  do  you  not,  under 
the  circumstances,  regret  having  made  this  large 
expenditure?  " 

"No,"  replied  Mr.  Harriman.  "This  valley 
was  worth  saving,  wasn't  it?  " 

"Yes,"  said  the  reporter. 

"Then  we  have  the  satisfaction  of  knowing 
that  we  saved  it,  haven't  we?  " 

It  is  unfortunate  that  so  fine  an  achievement 
as  the  controlling  of  the  Colorado  River  and 
the  saving  of  the  Imperial  Valley  should  have 
been  clouded  by  national  ingratitude  or  indif- 
ference; but  if  Mr.  Harriman  were  living  today, 
he  would  doubtless  find  compensation  and  satis- 
faction enough  in  the  results  of  his  work  as  they 
now  appear.  The  Salton  Sea,  which  once 
threatened  to  submerge  and  destroy  the  arti- 
ficially created  oasis  in  the  desert,  ceased  to 
rise  in  1907  and  is  now  slowly  drying  up.  The 
great  Laguna  dam  above  Yuma  is  done,  and  is 
furnishing  water  to  tens  of  thousands  of  acres 
in  southern  California  and  Arizona.  The  ter- 
ritory along  the  Colorado  River  below  the 
Grand  Canon,  whose  prospective  value  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  estimated  at  "from  $350,000,000 
to  $700,000,000"  is  safe.  The  Imperial  Valley, 
which  was  yielding  only  $1,200,000  to  its  cul- 
tivators ten  years  ago,  is  now  producing  cotton, 

105 


THE  SALTON  SEA 

barley,  alfalfa,  cantaloupes,  grapes,  vegetables 
and  live  stock  worth  more  than  ten  times  that 
amount.  According  to  an  estimate  made  by 
the  Imperial  Valley  Press  in  June,  1916,  the 
farmers  of  the  Valley  will  earn  this  year  a  sum 
equivalent  to  the  interest  on  $500,000,000.  And 
all  of  this  actual  and  potential  wealth,  as  well 
as  the  land  that  has  produced  or  will  produce 
it,  was  threatened  with  total  destruction  in 
1906,  and  was  saved  for  the  nation  by  the  con- 
structive genius  and  the  invincible  resolution 
of  the  " Master  Builder." 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


1 06 


'T'HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  a  few 
of  the  Macmillan  books  on  kindred  subjects. 


Italy,  France  and  Britain  at  War 

BY  H.  G.  WELLS, 
Author  of  "Mr.  Britling  Sees  it  Through,"  "What  is  Coming,"  etc. 

Cloth,  i2mo.   $1.50 

Mr.  Wells  first  discusses  the  changing  sentiment  as  regards  the  war  in  the 
different  countries  where  it  is  being  waged.  He  then  takes  up  the  war  in 
Italy — The  Isonzo  Front,  The  Mountain  Warfare,  and  Behind  the  Front. 
After  this  comes  a  section  devoted  to  the  Western  war,  with  chapters  on 
Ruins,  Grades  of  War,  The  War  Landscape,  New  Arms  for  Old  Ones,  and 
Tanks.  Finally  conies  the  part  hi  which  Mr.  Wells  asks,  "What  do  people 
think  about  the  war?"  Here  he  presents  such  problems  as  "Do  they  really 
think  at  all?,  The  Yielding  Pacifist,  and  The  Conscientious  Objector,  The 
Religious  Revival,  The  Riddle  of  the  British,  The  Social  Changes  in  Progress 
and  The  Ending  of  the  War." 

The  dates  appended  to  the  different  chapters  show  that  they  were  written 
the  latter  part  of  1916,  thus  embodying  the  distinguished  author's  latest 
thoughts  on  the  European  tragedy. 

"Rarely  has  Mr.  Wells  sent  forth  a  volume  more  brilliant,  keener  hi  its 
thinking,  truer  in  its  perceptions,  while  the  author's  restless  intelligence 
makes  it  possible,  necessary  indeed,  for  him  to  include  such  questions  as 
the  world  control  of  agriculture,  the  development  of  a  new  religion,  the 
passing  of  the  hero,  the  other  matters  upon  which  he  talks  with  illumination 
and  the  deepest  conviction.  ...  He  has  said  it  with  compactness  and 
earnestness  and  in  neat,  closely  trimmed  sentences  that  often  sparkle  with 
epigrammatic  wit." — N.  Y.  Times. 

"Mr.  Wells,  the  pacifist,  has  contributed  to  the  literature  of  the  war  the 
most  brilliant  exposition  yet  published.  There  are  many  great  pages  in  the 
volume — those  on  the  effigy  and  General  Joffre  and  the  perfected  French 
method  of  offensive  warfare,  for  instance;  andjds  comparison  between  the 
French  and  English  officers  is  a  miracle  of  frankness.  .  .  . — Philadelphia 
Public  Ledger. 


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American  World  Policies 

BY  WALTER  E.  WEYL, 

Author  of  "The  New  Democracy" 

Cloth,  $2.25 

Walter  E.  Weyl  will  be  remembered  as  the  author  of  The  New  Democracy, 
one  of  the  most  significant  books  dealing  with  the  spirit  of  American  life. 
Dr.  Weyl  is  not  a  prolific  writer — in  consequence  everything  that  he  pub- 
lishes is  well  considered;  the  product  of  prolonged  investigation  and  study. 
A  new  work  of  his,  entitled  American  World  Policies,  promises  to  have  a 
wide  appeal. 

The  United  States  is  deeply  concerned  with  the  peace  that  is  to  come  at 
the  end  of  the  war,  and  with  the  great  society  that  is  to  be  reconstituted 
then.  The  fact  that  America's  position  in  the  international  situation  has 
been  complicated  within  the  last  few  weeks  increases  this  interest  and  makes 
the  publication  of  Dr.  Weyl's  book  most  timely.  For  American  World 
Policies  seeks,  on  the  basis  of  economic  research,  to  define  this  country's 
attitude  towards  Expansion,  Imperialism,  the  Establishment  of  International 
Government  and  more  particularly  its  proper  relations  to  the  Monroe 
Doctrine,  Mexico,  China,  Japan,  the  British  Empire,  the  little  and  big 
nations  of  Europe  and  the  rule  of  the  sea.  The  book  relates  our  foreign  poli- 
cies to  our  internal  problems,  to  the  clash  of  industrial  classes  and  of  political 
parties,  to  the  decay  of  sectionalism  and  the  slow  growth  of  the  national 
sense.  It  is  a  study  of  "Americanism"  from  without  and  within. 

Dr.  Weyl  divides  his  twenty-one  chapters  into  three  parts.  The  first  is 
entitled  Our  Idealistic  Past,  taking  up  such  topics  as  Peace  Without  Effort, 
America  Among  the  Nations,  and  The  Unripe  Imperialism.  The  second 
is  The  Root  of  Imperialism,  and  here  are  considered  among  other  things 
The  Integration  of  the  World,  Imperialism  and  War,  The  Revolt  Against 
Imperialism,  and  The  American  Decision.  The  third  section,  Towards 
Economic  Internationalism,  considers  An  Antidote  to  Imperialism,  Amer- 
ican Interests  Abroad,  Pacifism,  Static  and  Dynamic,  Towards  International 
Government,  and  The  Force"!  of  Internationalism.  The  work  concludes  with 
a  chapter  captioned  The  Immediate  Program. 


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Brazil :  Today  and  Tomorrow 

BY  L.  E.   ELLIOTT 

With  Illustrations  and  Maps;  decorated  doth,  I2mo.  $2.25 

This  volume  seeks  to  show  how  and  to  what  extent  Brazil  has 
been  "opened  up"  and  developed  and  by  whom,  and  to  outline 
some  of  the  work  that  remains  to  be  done.  Miss  Elliott  first  of  all 
discusses  present  social  conditions  in  Brazil,  explaining  who  the 
Brazilian  is,  what  political  and  social  events  have  moulded  him  and 
what  he  has  done  to  develop  his  territory ;  a  territory  300,000  square 
miles  larger  than  that  of  the  United  States.  Later  sections  deal  with 
finance,  the  monetary  conditions  of  the  country,  the  problem  of  ex- 
change, and  the  source  of  income.  Still  others  take  up  various  means 
of  transit,  the  railroads,  the  coastwise  and  the  ocean  service,  rivers 
and  roads.  Industries  are  treated  in  considerable  detail  —  cattle, 
cotton  raising,  weaving,  coffee  growing  and  the  rubber  trade. 

The  Danish  West  Indies 

BY  WALDEMAR  WESTERGAARD 

With  Maps  and  Illustrations 

This  volume  presents  for  the  first  tune  a  detailed  and  authoritative 
picture  of  Danish  colonization  in  tropical  America.  It  covers  the 
administration  of  the  Danish  West  India  and  Guinea  Company 
(1671-1754),  emphasizing  the  economic  side,  but  touching  on  ex- 
ploits of  buccaneers  and  pirates,  even  Kidd  himself.  The  work  is 
based  on  extended  research  in  Danish  archives.  It  brings  into  clear 
relief  that  curious  triangular  commerce  on  the  Atlantic  typical  of 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  century  Europe. 

Russia  in  1916 

BY  STEPHEN  GRAHAM 

$1.25 

Mr.  Graham  continues  to  write  books  about  Russia  because  he 
continues  to  visit  that  country  and  to  see  wholly  interesting  and  un- 
usual aspects  of  life  there.  This  volume  records  his  impressions 
during  a  tramping  trip  made  in  the  summer  of  1916.  It  embodies, 
then,  his  very  latest  ideas  as  to  Russia  and  its  people. 


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Alaska:  The  Great  Country 

BY  ELLA  HIGGINSON 

New  edition.    With  illustrations.    Cloth,  8w. 

This  remarkable  volume  first  published  in  1908  and  since  that  time  held 
t  >  be  as  adequate  a  description  of  Alaska,  its  history,  its  scenery,  its  people, 
and  its  customs  as  has  ever  been  written,  now  appears  in  a  new  edition 
with  new  matter.  These  added  chapters  have  to  do  largely  with  the  latest 
information  about  the  railroads,  the  government,  mining,  fishing,  mer- 
chandise shipments  from  Alaska  and  the  agricultural  development  of  the 
land. 


Mount  Rainier:    A  Record  of  Explorations 

EDITED  BY  EDMOND  S.  MEANY, 

Professor  of  History  in  the  University  of  Washington,  Author  of  "Van- 
couver's Discovery  of  Puget  Sound,"  etc. 

With  illustrations.    Cloth,  Svo.    $2.50 

This  book  seeks  to  give  information  about  the  discovery  and  exploration 
of  Mt.  Rainier  and  its  environs.  The  discovery  and  naming  of  the  moun- 
tain, the  first  recorded  trip  through  Naches  Pass  in  1841,  the  first  attempted 
ascent,  and  the  first  successful  ascent,  the  explorations  of  the  northern 
slopes,  McClure's  achievement  and  tragic  death  in  1897,  the  rocks,  the 
glaciers  and  the  flora  —  it  is  such  topics  as  these  that  are  considered.  The 
volume  is  one  of  great  interest  and  value  to  every  lover  of  adventure  or 
student  of  history. 


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PANAMA,  the  Canal,  the  Country, 
and  the  People 

BY  ARTHUR  BULLARD 

Illustrated,  new  edition,  8°,  $2.25 

"A  thoroughly  satisfactory  book  for  one  who  is  looking  for 
solid  information."  —  Boston  Globe. 

"A  most  interesting  picture  of  the  country  as  it  is  to-day."  — 
San  Francisco  Chronicle. 

"One  of  the  very  few  books  on  any  Latin- American  country 
that  gives  any  idea  of  the  whole  land  and  people."  —  Los 
Angeles  Times. 

"One  of  the  very  best  of  travel  books."  —  Continent. 

"Lively  and  readable,  containing  the  real  atmosphere  of  the 
tropics."  —  Minneapolis  Tribune. 

"A  book  which  every  American  ought  to  read,  both  for 
pleasure  and  profit."  —  New  York  Herald. 


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DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW                       I 

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JUN  201978 

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DEC    11986 

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JUN     8  1980 

RBXCii.    JUN  2     1982 

DEC    1190U 

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FORM  NO   Dlf!£CULATION  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELEY 

BERKELEY,  CA  94720 


GENERAL  LIBRARY- U.C.  BERKELEY 


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